One Step Ahead
by Wandering Salamander
Summary: The one who survived the Breach is hiding a secret that would destroy the Inquisition. As enemies and allies attempt to uncover the past of this mysterious individual, he desperately struggles to gather a force to seal the Breach while staying one step ahead of being exposed. Rational fic, multiple viewpoint characters, faithful to canon and characterization but diverges strongly.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

* * *

Cassandra Pentaghast couldn't bear another moment trapped inside the Haven chantry, listening to the prayers and lamentations echoing off of the walls. She shoved the front door aside and staggered a few steps out into the biting cold night before collapsing against the stone wall of the chantry.

The Breach hung in the sky, casting the landscape for miles around in an otherworldly green glow brighter than moonlight. It snaked up from the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, slowly twisting and coiling like a living thing. Enormous chunks of the temple and mountain were suspended in its grasp, hanging in the air with nothing to support them as if to confirm that the rules governing the world had been irrevocably broken. Even as she watched, the tear in the world flashed with green lightning and spat out intermittent meteors, most of which flew outward beyond the horizon to crash Maker-knows-where.

The Breach expanded with each passing hour, utterly intractable. No mage had proven able to affect even the smallest rift it was spewing forth, and at the horrifying rate it was propagating rifts, it would soon destroy everything. Despite Cullen's best efforts, the ranks were disintegrating from desertion as wave after wave of soldiers were slaughtered by the rising tide of demons. Cassandra could understand their terror, even if she held contempt for their cowardice. After all, how could one fight a gaping wound in the world? But the hopelessness of the situation was beyond the point. If the soldiers were going to face their deaths regardless, they should choose to die in battle, not fleeing like panicked livestock. No, Cassandra Pentaghast would not hide behind the children and the elders, waiting to be butchered by the sadistic demons. Not the Right Hand of the Divine.

Cassandra stared at the end of the world, and felt no fear, only a sick feeling of grief and regret rising in her throat. Protecting Justinia had been her purpose, and she had failed. Not only had she failed Justinia, but also everyone depending on her. Justinia had been the last hope for peace, a Divine that Cassandra and so many others had prayed for, one who had embodied the ideals and potential of the Chantry, and had indefatigably worked to enact the Maker's will all the days of her life. Such grace, extinguished—and with it, countless innocents, templars, and mages.

 _Mages like Galyan._

The reminder sent another pang of grief stabbing into her heart, along with guilt for not being as pained by the loss of her former companion and lover as much as she was for Justinia. She sunk lower against the wall of the Chantry, tears stinging her eyes and tracing cold lines down her cheeks. Cassandra had lost nearly everything in that explosion, which just that morning shook the very ground beneath her feet, even miles away. Even though she'd been in shock, she knew as soon as she had seen the devastation that there was no use praying, that there would be no recovering from this. But they still had to _try,_ if for no other reason than to honor the dead and fulfill their duty to the living.

And then there were the reports of the one who had survived…

It had sounded preposterous, at first. A person being flung out of the Fade? A golden woman, some said Andraste herself, standing at the rift? And all evidence of this mysterious hooded knight, his hand blazing with strange power, had conveniently vanished.

Then again, there were _six_ witnesses, and nothing about this situation was normal. It may just be possible that such a thing had occurred. Was this man the monster that had torn open the sky? Or was he really a knight sent by Andraste?

One of the soldiers that had witnessed the event, a young hysteric named Tournay, had told her with utmost conviction that he had seen Andraste deliver him out of the Fade. But if that were true, why had he disappeared? And more importantly, if Andraste herself had spared this man, why hadn't she saved Most Holy?

No, it was all but certain that the this was not the work of Andraste. She had heard other soldiers claim that the golden woman was in fact casting the man _out_ of the Fade. That made a great deal more sense, even if she wasn't quite prepared to believe Andraste's direct involvement yet.

According to the six soldiers that had been there, the man had fallen unconscious, but had revived shortly after they had moved him to a litter to take him out of the ruins. He had asked what was happening, and an argument had broken out between Tournay and the other soldiers who thought the man ought to be a prisoner. The Breach then expanded, and the mark on the man's hand had apparently reacted in turn, making him lose consciousness again. The soldiers continued as before, but were soon attacked by demons, and had to put down the litter to take up arms. When they had defeated the demons, they found that the man was gone from the litter. Ominously, there had been no trail of footprints in the snow aside from the soldiers' own, as if the man had vanished without a trace.

Whether he was an innocent survivor or guilty fiend, the path was clear: they needed to find the fugitive and determine what this magic was that linked him to the Breach.

But how? For all she knew, he had slipped back into the Fade. The ability to appear and disappear into thin air was something no tracker in the world could contend with. She needed a different strategy.

It didn't seem that she had any choice but to follow any sightings of a tall, fully armored man in a hooded fur mantle. Vague though the description may be, with any luck he wouldn't easily be able to conceal the mark on his hand. If she could figure out his goal, his destination, then perhaps she could lay a trap there and capture him.

Cassandra was distracted from her thoughts by a strange, buzzing, almost _hissing_ sound that carried faintly over the wind, seemingly to her left. She also sensed something strange with her arcane perceptions, and she bolted upright, grabbing the hilt of her sword.

The strange noise stopped, and for an instant it seemed like a faint golden flash illuminated the falling snow and slush on the ground, coming from around the corner of the chantry. Cassandra nearly jumped when a figure rounded the corner and approached the front of the chantry.

The figure was slouched, yet towering in height, and wore a dark gray hooded mantle that covered his entire body and hid his features. A fringe of somewhat lighter-colored fur was draped across the shoulders, the pelt of a bear judging by the long claws gleaming in the faint green light.

"Stop! Come no closer!" Cassandra shouted at him. She drew her blade and pointed it squarely at his chest.

The man stopped.

Then, Cassandra's jumbled thoughts finally fell into place. _Tall man. Strange feeling. Hooded mantle._

This was the fugitive.

Cassandra's first thought was to reject the idea. What _possible_ motive could the fugitive have to escape custody only to show up right on the chantry's doorstep? But no, the man fit the description perfectly, it had to be him. Was this some sort of attack? A message? A surrender?

Before Cassandra could decide how to react, the fugitive spoke in a voice so cracked and brutal it barely sounded human:

"Is this the chantry? The authority that governs magic?"

The odd question came as such a surprise that Cassandra almost forgot the answer.

"It is." Cassandra said through gritted teeth. "Who are you? Why have you come here?"

"I seek aid," the fugitive said insistently. "My name is Aaron. I was at the Conclave."

Cassandra shuddered at the fugitive's words, both at the confirmation of her fears, and the way they were said. They were pronounced very slowly and deliberately, as if he were reading aloud a foreign tongue, and he spoke in a low, sibilant, resonanting voice that was hoarse with disuse.

As unsettling as the fugitive was, Cassandra's sword didn't waver. She gathered her strength, preparing to smite him with her Seeker powers if he so much as twitched. "Show me your hands. Slowly."

The thick, heavy mantle parted to reveal the fugitive was encased in gleaming silverite armor. The smooth, blueish-silver overlapping plates were unadorned, with no extravagances or designs, but obviously of high quality. An exception were the gauntlets, which were also silverite, but seemed to be from a different set of armor altogether—they were spiky, ornate, with fingers that ended in long, sharpened points of the Tevinter style, which gave the impression of claws or a large spider.

Cassandra stiffened in shock as he held his arms out and turned his left hand so that the palm was facing her. There, a line of magical energy marked his hand, shining with the same malevolent green light as the Breach.

"You are a guardian of the chantry, yes? Please… I need help." the fugitive said, and something in his posture seemed to crumble, betraying deep pain and exhaustion. "I fear this wild magic is killing me."

Cassandra tried to examine the fugitive's face, looking for signs of duplicity, but the hood and the dim light obscured it.

"What happened to you, _Aaron?"_ she spat in sudden fury, thrusting her sword closer to his throat. "Did your spell rebound? Has your destruction caught you in its wake?"

The fugitive—Aaron, if he was to be believed—seemed to be stunned by her harsh questioning. His hands retreated back beneath his mantle, and he waited several long moments before replying, "I don't remember how this magic came to be on my hand."

"So you don't deny you were responsible for this?!" Cassandra demanded, her voice cracking with emotion. "How could you not be?! Do you expect me to believe it's some kind of _coincidence_ that you're the only survivor?!"

Aaron swayed slightly. "I don't… know how this happened. But I didn't—I doubt that I caused it. Or would have, even if I could."

 _He_ _doubts_ _that he caused it?_ Cassandra thought disbelievingly. Just who was this Aaron, and why did he think he could just show up and ask for their _help?_

Cassandra forced back her urge to attack him. He would pay for his crimes… _after_ she had learned everything she could about how to put a stop to all of this. That took the highest priority.

And she couldn't interrogate him if he was dead.

Reluctantly, Cassandra lowered her sword slightly. Aaron was practically dead on his feet anyway, and she had her powers ready to counter any magical assault he tried.

"Cooperate with us fully and we will find a mage to help you." Cassandra said, her voice level. "Resist and you will die."

Aaron's hood dipped in an apparent nod. "I will do as you bid. Within reason. May I ask for your name?"

Cassandra glared into the black shadow that covered Aaron's face. "I am Cassandra Pentaghast, Seeker of Truth and Right Hand of the Divine."

Aaron didn't seem cowed or surprised by this. Instead, he seemed to relax somewhat. Some small part of Cassandra was offended by the reaction.

With a tilt of her head, Cassandra gestured Aaron to go inside the Chantry. She followed as he shuffled inside, struggling to keep his feet under him.

They hadn't even shut the door before there was a flash of green outside. Cassandra turned to see the Breach contort, expanding in size and sending a rain of new meteors streaking across the sky.

 _Aaron! He's causing this!_

With a wordless shout, Cassandra spun, slashing with her blade, but Aaron fell beneath the swing as he collapsed to the floor with a loud crash. He spasmed, gasping, then went rigid, the mark on his hand crackling and flaring with energy. Cassandra was so confused that she halted her attack. Was it the Breach that was causing this, and not him?

Aaron let out a piercing scream that descended into a wail of agony unlike anything she'd ever heard, clutching his left arm like he wanted to tear it off and fling it across the room.

Belatedly, the sound of thunder rolled over the landscape. Almost as soon as the sound had reached them, the light from the Breach dimmed somewhat and Aaron's mark settled down. He stopped screaming abruptly.

If that pain had been an act, it had been extremely convincing. Aaron was no longer moving. Cassandra hesitated to help him, in case it was a trick.

As she was deciding what to do, Leliana rushed towards them, pushing aside pale-faced lay sisters who stood frozen, staring at the two of them.

Leliana came to a halt before Aaron's sprawled body. "Maker's breath, what happened?! Is this—?!"

"The fugitive, yes," Cassandra said bitterly. "He says his name is Aaron, and that this mark is killing him. He _claims_ to be ignorant of how he got it."

Leliana went to her knees and pulled back the hood, revealing a silverite helm with a pair of wide eye-slits, an angular faceplate with holes on either side for air, and some kind of black fabric that seemed to line the inside for no other purpose than to hide the eyes and mouth of the wearer. Leliana leaned her head in close to his, listening.

"He's still breathing. I think he's just unconscious." she said, getting to her feet. We need to have someone examine this mark. Did he say if he was a mage?"

"Not… not _as such,_ no. But what else could he be, with such magic?" Cassandra said, shifting nervously.

"I have a feeling that this magic isn't actually _coming_ from him, and it's not often you see a mage wearing so much armor…" Leliana said skeptically.

At that moment, Aaron twitched and everyone in the chantry flinched. He gave a low groan and pressed his hands to the ground, then pushed himself upright.

"You shouldn't move," Leliana said, reaching out to stabilize him by the shoulder. "Just hold still. We'll bring a litter."

She looked up and met Cassandra's eyes. "Go find that elven mage from earlier. Solas. He went with the contingent studying the closest rift to the village. _Hurry,_ before the Breach expands again!"

Cassandra bolted out the door. She would waste no time, and do whatever it took to find answers.

Even if that meant helping the one who had done this.

* * *

 **A/N:** Cassandra has had a really bad day, and now strange things are afoot. Fair warning, the events of canon have already diverged at this point, and it's only going to get massively different from here on out, so anyone hoping for a story consisting of stenographic repetition of game events and dialogue is going to be disappointed, I'm afraid.

This story is a rational fic, and for those unfamiliar with the genre, that means (among other things) that the plot hews to realism, and unfolds as a result of logical consequences and interactions, which a clever and lucky reader can attempt to predict. Rest assured, there is a unifying explanation behind all of the plot's mysteries, and they are fully within the bounds of canon. In other words, they are guessable mysteries.

I challenge you, the reader, to come up with the right answer and leave reviews with your guesses on matters both major and minor, and the evidence to support them. As a general rule, if you try to lay out all the evidence for and against your hypothesis and put forward an honest effort to _disprove_ it, yet fail, then odds are pretty good that you've hit on the truth, or at least something truth-adjacent. The first one who manages to guess Aaron's identity correctly before the big reveal, if someone manages to, is entitled to a special in-story prize, request, or favor from me, but you'll only find out if you were right after all is revealed!

Good luck, thanks for reading, and thanks to Bioware for creating this great universe!


	2. Chapter 2

One Step Ahead Chapter 2

* * *

Leliana heard shouting from outside, and looked up from a hastily-drawn field report to see Cassandra burst into the chantry beside the apostate Solas. As earlier, he was wearing simple green and brown clothes, and carrying a wooden staff with a curved, scythe-like head. Despite the late hour and their exhaustion from the day's events, both moved quickly and with purpose, bare feet and armored boots hitting the stone floor in sync.

Cassandra raised a hand and pointed, and Solas nodded and veered into the room past Leliana, so focused he didn't even seem to notice as they brushed by each other.

That kind of attitude towards a human woman could have killed an elven man in other circumstances. Solas was obviously no cringing, servile Alienage-dweller. This was a man with confidence and self-possession. Already, Leliana could sense she had made the right choice to send for him.

Cassandra followed Solas into the small priests' cell. The door slammed shut with a loud clang.

Leliana could do nothing but stand vigil outside the door, feeling useless. What else could she do? She was a spymaster, and this man was their only clue. So while Cullen's forces were being slaughtered in droves, she would wait for word on whether their one lead would survive.

Some hours later, long after midnight, the door to the priest's cell opened, and Solas stepped out, looking as haggard as Leliana felt.

"Lady Nightingale." Solas greeted, nodding his head slightly.

"What news?" Leliana said bluntly. She had no more patience for pleasantries.

"There are many things we need to discuss…" the elf said in a low voice, so that only Leliana could hear.

With a sharp look and a wave of her hand, Leliana dismissed the nearby soldiers, templars and priests, all of whom were hovering close by. They cleared away further into the chantry.

With one last look around for any eavesdroppers, Solas leaned in. "His body should be unconscious in this state, perhaps even comatose. It's almost unbelievable that he's awake, let alone lucid. I don't think it's natural. He wouldn't tell me how he was doing it, at any rate."

"Is there anything you can do for him?" Leliana asked, changing the subject. It wouldn't do to turn this into an interrogation—not just yet. She could intuit that Aaron may have taken some kind of measures to artificially revive himself each time he fell unconscious, but that information could be filed away for later examination. They had bigger things to attend to.

"I've done all I can to stabilize his condition, at least directly..." Solas said, suddenly pensive. "Though, come to think of it, there might be something I _can_ do about the surroundings…"

Solas waved his hand, producing an opaque green light that quickly went translucent and then faded away. A strange stillness seemed to descend over them, like they were buried by a blanket of snow.

"What did you do?" Leliana asked, her voice sounding strangely flat in her ears.

"I attenuated a small area of the Veil around us to make the effects on the mark less pronounced, perhaps slow them a bit. This will not hold, however. Eventually, he will die if left like this." Solas said matter-of-factly.

"Is there anything I can provide that would help?" Leliana asked.

Solas' brow knitted in frustration. "What is his race? When Seeker Cassandra and I asked, he refused to answer."

Leliana's eyes narrowed slightly. "I assume he is human, probably an Avvar, based on his size, strange accent, and the bear pelt. Though I suppose it's possible he's a hornless Qunari. I once traveled with one who had a similar height. Why do you ask? What did you find?"

Solas had a rather sour frown on his face. "I'm… not sure, exactly. I can't seem to make sense of him, so I thought that knowing his background might provide context. I have traveled far, and seen much; to be presented with such a baffling mystery is… not something I am accustomed to. But the mark is connected to the Breach, there is no question about that."

Leliana crossed her arms. For all his wise, competent affect, that was a spectacularly unhelpful assessment. Mere hours after… the unthinkable had occurred, she no longer had any patience to spare. "Just tell me what you do know. Is he a mage? Could he have done this?"

"I can feel faint echoes of power about him," Solas said, staring down at the faint light around his hands. "There is a residual aura of magic, but it is difficult to perceive past all the interference. He is probably a hedge mage or apostate in hiding. In his current state, so weakened and close to death, it's difficult to tell. But… it is strange. It is like the tiny wisps and fragments of spirits that normally accumulate around people and mages in particular are being… _repelled_ by him, somehow. Usually, demons find weakened mages more enticing."

Leliana frowned. "That's not necessarily a bad thing, is it?"

Solas shook his head. "I am unsure. His armor is so heavily reinforced with silverite enchantments that trying to get a sense of his abilities is almost impossible. It's like trying to see something dark behind a bright, glaring light."

"Silverite enchantments?" Leliana echoed, trying to fit that piece into the puzzle. "That makes no sense, you don't put silverite runes in armor, they're only useful for making weapons more effective against darkspawn…"

"And effective at creating enough magical interference to make sensing his abilities all but impossible, evidently," Solas pointed out. "We apostates go to great lengths to hide ourselves. Regardless of whatever else he might be trying to hide, I highly doubt he is directly responsible for the esoteric magic of the Breach. Indeed, I believe it is beyond the power of _any_ mage to create. It is far more likely that he was near whatever magical effect caused the Breach, and part of it annealed to him."

Leliana inhaled sharply. "That still leaves open the possibility he was involved."

"Or he could simply be a survivor, saved from the explosion by the very mark which is now killing him." Solas shrugged. "Either way, we cannot overlook one crucial detail: when he appeared, a Fade rift opened, and yet it collapsed as soon as he fell through. Nothing I have been able to do has managed to close a rift. If the Breach's magic can be countered by the mark, it may be possible to use it to cause a… resonance, of sorts, with nearby Fade rifts, enough to shatter and seal them. It could possibly seal even the Breach itself."

Leliana's heart pounded in her chest. It was almost too much to hope for. "What would we need to make that happen?"

Solas rubbed his chin, considering. "We shall have to see. It may be as simple as proximity to a rift, or it may require some skill or training on his behalf."

 _Whatever must be done, must be done now. There's no telling how long Aaron will last._

Leliana made her decision and nodded to Solas. "I will tell our commander to muster our forces and retake the valley and the path to the temple. Solas, I'm entrusting Aaron to your care. If you can, preserve him long enough to get him there."

Solas nodded grimly. "Give me tonight. By morning, he will either be strong enough to go out and try to seal the rifts, or he will succumb. But he _will_ succumb later if we do nothing and the Breach is allowed to keep expanding. It is a certainty."

"Do it." Leliana said, and turned on her heel.

* * *

Cassandra stood with her arms crossed, leaning against the wall of the cell as Solas tried to preserve the life of their prisoner.

She had to remain vigilant… but she was more exhausted than she could ever remember being. Not in the sense that her body was at its limits, but just pure mental and emotional fatigue.

Solas kept glancing at her, meeting her eyes. It got to be so bothersome that she finally brought it up.

"What do you _want,_ mage?" Cassandra asked warily.

"You really should get some rest." Solas insisted.

"It is my duty to guard the prisoner," Cassandra muttered. "I would not leave the task to anyone but Leliana, and she's away."

"Your prisoner is not going anywhere, Seeker, not like this. If we want to deal the Breach, we need both of you to be at your best." Solas said sharply.

Cassandra wanted to argue, but her thoughts were muddy, and her eyes stung just from the effort to keep them open.

"He has disappeared before." she pointed out.

"I will _not_ let that happen," Solas said with absolute conviction. "Nor will the templar guards you stationed just outside the only door, I should think. If I _need_ you, I will _wake_ you."

Cassandra said nothing, but she lowered herself into a chair. _Perhaps things will be better tomorrow…_

Before doubt of this notion could enter her mind, she fell asleep.

* * *

Cassandra felt something shaking her shoulder. With some effort, she opened her eyes, feeling sore and stiff all over, her armor digging into her from where she had sat still for too long.

As soon as the blurriness cleared from her vision, she was crushed by the memory of everything that had happened. It hadn't been a nightmare. The Divine, the Conclave, Regalyan, the fugitive— _the fugitive!_

Cassandra bolted upright, nearly colliding with Solas, the one who had woken her. But Aaron was still laying on the bed in shackles, exactly where she had seen him before.

"Calm yourself, Seeker!" Solas said firmly. "Everything is fine. I only wished to wake you because it is dawn. I have done all I can for Aaron, and I must go ahead with Lady Nightingale to prepare the Fade rift. Can you bring him to the rift?"

Breathing heavily, Cassandra walked forward, and Aaron's head tracked her movements. She looked down on him, then back at Solas.

"He is ready?" she asked him curtly.

"His strength is recovered as much as it can be." Solas said, and Cassandra noticed for the first time how drained he looked, though she was probably no better. It didn't matter, anyway.

"Then go. I will get him there if I have to drag him myself." she said quietly.

Solas grabbed his staff and put his hand on the handle of the door, but then paused and looked back. "Do not be rough with him. He may be able to move, but his life is balanced on a razor's edge."

Cassandra gave a grunt of acknowledgement, and Solas left. Part of her was worried that she was being rude, but the overwhelming majority of her just didn't care anymore. She felt like she had used up all of her fury and sadness yesterday, leaving her a husk. The only thing that mattered now was stopping the Breach before it swallowed what little good was left in the world.

And lying here before her was either the biggest asset or biggest obstacle to that goal. She _loathed_ the position that put her in, hated how much leverage and power that gave him. One final act of spite from Aaron, and they were going to lose the battle against the demons and the rifts.

By extension, any mistakes _she_ made in dealing with him would doom them all as well.

"Get up." Cassandra ordered.

Aaron swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself up. He didn't seem energetic, but it was a far cry from when he was as slow and feeble as a cold snake the night before.

"You are going to walk ahead of me and follow every instruction I give. Is that understood?" Cassandra said, resting her palm on the pommel of her sword.

"Yes," Aaron nodded.

Cassandra stepped aside. "Then move."

Cassandra followed him to the front doors of the Chantry, ignoring everyone's stares, and stepped into the harsh light of day. The Breach had grown even larger in the night, and seeing it sent another pang of dread and loss through Cassandra. It was so vast, so intractable, and yet all their hopes hinged on such a tiny spark on their mysterious prisoner's hand.

As they headed towards the Haven gate, Cassandra noticed a change in Aaron's behavior. He had started to withdraw in on himself, seemingly trying to shrink away and hide under his hooded mantle, even though he still towered over most people while slouching. She saw his head darting from person to person as they passed by, and he kept his distance from them like a skittish, wary animal. Only after they had passed the soldiers at the gates did he start to move normally again, though he reacted the same way whenever a group of soldiers would rush past them.

Cassandra fought to keep her balance as she walked up the steep and snowy path, her eyes and sword trained unerringly on the back of Aaron's head. She was watching for the tiniest aberration, the slightest flicker of magic. His extreme nervousness around people only served to confirm his guilt. Cassandra knew he would try something the instant she was distracted.

Knowing that she had survived this long only because she erred on the side of caution, Cassandra called upon her own unique Seeker ability, in order to set the Lyrium in Aaron's blood aflame and immobilize him if need be.

She encountered unexpected difficulties. The Breach was clouding her arcane senses. It was a distant, tingling, phantom sensation; as if her abilities were a limb that had fallen asleep. On top of that, she could feel Lyrium-wrought enchantments of extraordinary power blazing throughout Aaron's armor like miniature suns, but beyond those, she could sense nothing from him, like he was a blank void in space—or someone who was not even a mage or a templar at all. It would have been far more reassuring if she could feel a weak power from him, but _nothing?_ It was incredibly unnerving.

 _Could he be canceling out my own abilities? Is he that powerful?_

Cassandra started to become paranoid that her abilities couldn't overpower his. Without question, he would have to be a maleficar of incredible arcane might to be able to create the Breach. However, she should have been able to subdue his weakened magic by using her Seeker abilities. The elven apostate had assured her that Aaron's mana, inasmuch as it could even be detected, must have been depleted by the Mark on his hand. She certainly sensed no great reserve of mana in him, not that such a thing would be an impediment to a blood mage. Seekers were supposed to be immune to blood magic's mind-controlling abilities, but if she couldn't sense him, it raised the question of whether that immunity had limits. If he were to bite his tongue to use blood magic…

Cassandra was slowly convincing herself to just kill him, and be done with it. The realization that she was doing this gave her pause. Was this her rage speaking? Was it her fear? Or was it really a prudent action? Leliana and Solas seemed to think he could stop this, but what if he took the opportunity to make things even worse?

It wasn't as if her hatred wasn't justified. Even after killing Most Holy and the entire Conclave, the coward hid himself behind a bear's pelt and fine armor made of extravagantly expensive silverite, no doubt looted from the corpse of some hapless nobleman or Chevalier. Just another crime he had to pay for…

 _No. There will be time to kill you later._ Cassandra thought as she watched the maleficar. _But for now, you are our only hope of containing the catastrophe you unleashed._

Cassandra's lip curled when Aaron started speaking to her.

"If the Breach causes the Mark to flare again, please don't take that as a hostile action and attack me again. I have no control over it." Aaron said slowly, in an odd affect that almost made him sound simple, but for the words being said. Was he being condescending?

"If this is some kind of trick…" Cassandra let the threat hang.

"It isn't. If I start convulsing, don't think it is a trick or try to help me. There's nothing you can do anyway. I thought it would be best for both of us if I told you this beforehand, instead of making an excuse after the fact." he said, as calmly as if he were discussing the weather.

The attempt to sound calm and reasonable reminded Cassandra of Varric's little games, making himself out to be the persecuted victim, but Aaron lacked Varric's veneer of charm.

"I can see what you're doing. Cooperating. Acting polite, offering minor concessions, trying to convince me to trust you. It won't work. If you were just some innocent bystander, there's no way you could have survived, when—" Cassandra checked her voice before it could crack, "—When everyone else died."

"I don't know if it was a coincidence or not." Aaron insisted, his hoarse words growing a little faster. "I don't even remember the explosion. I just… woke up in a strange place. In hindsight, it seems likely to be the Fade. I had no memory of how I got there. Pieces are still missing. But I do remember that the mark was on my hand, even there."

Cassandra knew he was lying, but she decided to indulge her curiosity. Often, letting a suspect spin their web of lies led to them trapping themselves within. She had not prepared for an interrogation yet, but couldn't pass up the opportunity. "What happened then?"

"The place was _wrong_. Twisted. I wanted to escape. I remember that I was climbing some sort of steep rock outcropping—which might also have been a staircase—and skittering _creatures_ were pursuing me. At the top was there was a glow, and a woman or some kind of spirit watching me. She was made entirely of light. I reached out to her. That is all I remember." he said.

"Some of the soldiers claim this woman was Andraste, banishing you from the Fade." Cassandra said icily. "And then you somehow fled from our soldiers after you were caught, only coming to us because you are dying. Those are not the actions of an innocent."

Aaron lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Some of the soldiers thought I had caused the Breach, and wanted me executed. I don't believe I did it, so I left. As for the woman, I cannot say. I couldn't even see the glowing woman's features. But my impression at the time was that she was reaching down to help me escape from the creatures."

The tip of Cassandra's sword traced tight little circles in the air as she considered the story. Aaron seemed _entirely_ too calm as he was recounting this; it was like he was wholly detached from the events that would leave any innocent person panicking and rushing to make excuses. _Nobody_ should seem that unconcerned with their own fate.

"Why should I believe you?" Cassandra asked.

The prisoner paused for a moment. "You shouldn't take me at my word alone. _I'm_ aware that I'm telling the truth—as I know it, at least—but there is no way for _you_ to know that. However, if you act as an objective observer, you can find evidence to either corroborate or disprove my claims. If I tell you what I expect you will find in advance, and you find it, then perhaps a measure of trust can be established."

The anger returned to Cassandra in full force. "Are you telling me how to investigate _your own crime?!"_

The hooded head shook from side to side. "No. My testimony is not a factor you could trust, so nothing I say matters in the absence of evidence."

That damnably slow, calm tone again. Cassandra had no idea what Aaron was trying to accomplish anymore. He wasn't even pretending to believe he was innocent. In fact, he seemed to be agreeing with her investigative instincts, which was unprecedented as far as her suspects were concerned.

"Did you say you were Orlesian...?" Cassandra asked suspiciously.

"I'm not. Why? Do I seem Orlesian?" said Aaron, sounding almost self-conscious.

"Aside from hiding your face, not particularly. It's that you simply _reek_ of the Game. All the lying and scheming and hidden meanings." Cassandra said with disgust.

The prisoner slumped slightly. "Really? That's disheartening. I strive to be honest in all things."

Cassandra had to exert considerable will to restrain herself from bashing his smug, mocking head in. "Of course you do. So, where is it you _are_ from?"

"The Frostbacks," he said immediately.

Cassandra's strained patience was nearing its end. _"You_ are a hidden apostate, yet you dress like a Chevalier, sound like a beast, dissemble like an Orlesian noble, and carry a shard of the Fade in your hand. If you expect me to believe that you're from some backwater village or Avvar tribe—"

At that moment, the Breach lit up with lightning and spewed out several Fade-meteors. One of the meteors streaked overhead, clipping treetops and impacting the hill just opposite of them with the force of an explosion. Chips of ice and frozen dirt flecked Cassandra's exposed skin, and the white powder blinded her for a moment.

When it cleared, she could see that the prisoner was crumpled on the ground in a heap, clutching at the blazing mark and shaking with pain. He was making strained choking noises, as though he couldn't even draw in breath to scream properly. Cassandra felt a brief moment of satisfaction at his suffering, but her attention was quickly forced away.

The green, glowing crater was within a stone's throw, and began churning and boiling unnaturally. Cassandra grabbed her shield from her back. There was no way she could drag the prisoner away fast enough to avoid the demons. As disgusting as it was to defend the helpless reprobate, she would fight.

Two wisps and a shade seemingly erupted out of nowhere, but before they could approach, one of the wisps suddenly sprouted several thin shafts of wood, and burst into motes of green light.

Cassandra spared a quick glance at the hill to the north, where she saw Varric descending towards them at a precisely measured rhythm, smoothly shooting his crossbow Bianca again and again as he did.

Cassandra could see the creatures' attention turning towards him as well. She bellowed at them, then charged.

With a warbling howl, the shade lifted its arms overhead and slashed down at Cassandra's shield, its claws strong enough to score the metal, but Cassandra and Varric's combined efforts managed to tear into its thick hide and kill it. The wisp followed shortly thereafter, but not before it managed to hit Cassandra with several nauseating blasts of spirit energy.

Varric shouldered Bianca and sauntered over as Aaron picked himself up out of the snow, leaning against his knees.

"Is everyone all right?" Varric called out.

 _"Atrast vala, salroka._ I'll live. Thank you." Aaron said between labored breaths.

Cassandra stared at him in confusion. He was apprehensive around everyone else, yet around Varric he acted relieved? Did the two know each other? And where did Aaron learn ancient dwarven greetings, of all things?

Varric looked between him and Cassandra, his eyes bright despite the grim set of his mouth. "Ah, so this is the foundling that turned up at the chantry door, Seeker. You have him _shackled?_ Do you really think this was all the work of _him?"_

"You _would_ think he was innocent, Varric." Cassandra said, rubbing a steadily growing headache at her temples. "I suppose your opinion is not swayed by the fact that he was found falling out of the _Fade itself_ in the very center of the ruins of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, or the fact that he _just so happens_ to be an apostate in hiding, or the fact that that the mark on his hand is _directly linked_ to the Breach in the sky?"

Varric held up his hands. "Hey, I'm just saying, if I were going to blow up the Conclave, I wouldn't blow myself up with it, unless I was utterly devoted and suicidal. And if I was utterly devoted and suicidal, I wouldn't surrender and cooperate. That apostate elf is right, this doesn't seem like his doing."

"That's a good point," Aaron said. "But I _did_ survive, intentionally or not, and my amnesia complicates matters. It's possible I somehow destroyed the Conclave and forgot how I did it, _that_ I did it, and why—not that I consider that possibility at all likely, but it still bears investigating."

"I… what?" Varric blinked, caught off guard.

Cassandra gave both of them a scorching glare, first Aaron, then Varric. "Clearly, _something_ went wrong. Why are you _here,_ Varric?"

"Well, when that guy Solas said you were bringing him to the rift, I thought that if you're going to escort someone _supposedly_ powerful enough to tear open a giant hole into the Fade," he said, using the hand that wasn't holding Bianca to gesture in a wide circle, "then you might want some extra help."

"That's a very good point," Aaron reiterated unhelpfully.

"Varric, I—just stop! Our leaders are _dead,_ our forces are collapsing, and I'm the _only one here_ that is immune to the mind control this suspected maleficar could use to escape! What would you have me do?!" Cassandra said, throwing up her arms in exasperation.

"Excuse me," the prisoner said, raising a long finger, "But _if_ I were a blood mage that wanted to escape—and I'm not—I would have already taken control of him and made him shoot you. And if I _hadn't_ thought of that yet, I would have done so after you raised the possibility. You really shouldn't give your prisoners ideas."

Varric barked out an incredulous laugh. "Maker's balls, I'll have to remember that one."

"That would be your last mistake." Cassandra said lowly to Aaron. "You would be dead before the spell could even form."

Varric tapped his chin thoughtfully. "You know, while we're giving out free advice, Seeker, if you want the prisoner to help you, you could at least _pretend_ to offer him a chance at proving his innocence. Telling him you've decided his guilt already doesn't help."

Aaron turned from Cassandra to Varric and back. "If I were you, I actually _would_ listen to him."

 _"Fine."_ Cassandra gritted out. "You may join us, Varric, the rift is not far from here. But before we argue about it, let us first see if the mark on the prisoner's hand actually _can_ help us."

"Sensible. There's only one way to find out," Aaron said quietly.

On that uncertain note, the three of them set off towards the enormous Breach coiling into the sky.

* * *

 **A/N**

Cassandra and Varric are starting to catch on that there is something really off about this Aaron guy. In other news, I have received my first review! Thank you, Math725e, and thanks to everyone who favorites and subscribes. And a big thanks to the good folks over at Bioware who created the world of Thedas. Stay tuned for a Varric POV chapter next week!


	3. Chapter 3

One Step Ahead Chapter 3

* * *

As Varric trudged through the snow alongside Cassandra and Aaron, he looked up at the Breach and sighed. Dwarves just weren't _meant_ for this sort of thing.

Dwarves didn't dream, at least not without a demon forcing them—in fact, they weren't connected to the Fade at all. The sum of Varric's entire Surfacer life, which included consorting with mages and exploring the Fade, had driven a wedge between himself and the dwarves of Orzammar. Even so, there were still some things all dwarves could agree on:

 _Sodding magic!_

Magic ran a close second for being the source of all problems, only behind the fundamental nature of people. Dwarves hated it, with good reason, and being disconnected from that nonsense was part of why they considered themselves so superior. Yet the entire dwarven economy depended on magic. Oh, the irony.

Between this green-tinted nightmare, the eerie blue glow of Lyrium, and, of course, the horrific hue of Red Lyrium, Varric was starting to wonder how many more colors of the magical rainbow were going to try to kill him. He bet it would be yellow. Yellow always seemed like a dodgy color.

Varric had seen every kind of weird, dangerous thing running with Hawke, and even more on expeditions and adventures outside of Kirkwall. Demons and dragons were practically passé at this point. After all of that, Varric liked to think he had grown a thicker skin for this kind of craziness, but if he was being honest, right now he was feeling very alone and frightened.

Not that he would ever let it show, of course.

Aaron, the mysterious 'knight' that was rumored to have dropped out of the Fade, was walking not three feet away, and he seemed to be staring down at Varric. It was downright unnerving, not knowing what he was thinking.

Aaron was a very tall man, despite his current slouch, and his size was seemingly magnified by a massive gray mantle fringed with a bear pelt. His body was almost entirely hidden by the cloth, which nearly scraped the snow. A fully enclosed helmet covered by a broad hood disguised his features completely. Behind the front slit of the mantle, he could see fleeting flashes of heavy silverite armor and dull, dark shackles. Words like "brooding" and "sinister" and even "insectile" came to Varric's mind.

Varric finally couldn't stand the staring and the awkward silence any longer.

"My full name's Varric Tethras, by the way. I'm a businessman, writer, and if I do say so myself, _raconteur extraordinaire."_ Varric said, putting on what he hoped was a disarming smile as Cassandra shot him a dirty look. "So, what's your side of the story? I hear you're the one at the center of all this."

The fugitive's pelt moved as his manacled hands emerged from it. They were completely covered by ornate silverite gauntlets that had cruel spikes at the knuckles and finger-sheaths that tapered to long, clawlike points. Even through the gauntlet, a strange energy lit his left hand with a sickly green glow.

Varric flinched, but all the man did was cross his fists over his chest and give Varric a proper dwarven bow. "My name is Aaron. _Sertu nal jornun da_ —I am but a wanderer."

That... that was ancient dwarven, all right. Despite Aaron's slow cadence and weirdly resonant voice, his accent was probably better than Varric could have tried to fake. "The giant is dwarfier than I am!" Varric muttered incredulously. Louder, he said, "No need for the formalities, I'm a Surfacer born and bred. But what brought you here, anyway?"

"I was searching for someone who was supposed to be at the Conclave." said Aaron.

Cassandra's head whipped around to look at Aaron. _"What?!_ You never said this! You claimed not to remember what happened at the Conclave!"

"I don't remember _what_ happened there, but I do remember _why_ I was there. It's no small distinction." Aaron said pointedly.

"And then you claim to have conveniently developed selective amnesia! _Really,_ you expect us to believe that?! It is _obviously_ a lie!" Cassandra said, her face twisting in anger.

Aaron held up his marked hand. "You don't think I've tried to imagine a hundred different ways I could have gotten this? If I wished to lie, I could just pick any of my hypotheses. I could say that I interrupted some maleficar assassin's ritual, and was struck by the blowback. Or that I picked up a cursed object by mistake. I could claim I gained it because I was physically in the Fade, or some other such equally plausible and unfalsifiable lie. After all, no one lives who could contradict me. However, the _truth_ of the matter is that I simply do not remember what happened. That may or may not be a _natural_ phenomenon. Regardless, it would be irresponsible to speculate _anything_ without evidence."

Varric had to stop himself from gaping. If Aaron was trying to appear more trustworthy, he certainly wasn't doing himself any favors. Cassandra seemed to have forgotten what she was about to say, but she quickly recovered.

"We _will_ discover the truth, and see if it matches your story." Cassandra said. "I had assumed you were there because you are an apostate fighting in the Mage–Templar War. Who were you searching for?"

"I was never a party to the war. I was searching for a woman at the Conclave, that I might speak to her about an urgent matter. She is called Lady Nightingale, the Left Hand of the Divine, or Sister Leliana. Seeker Cassandra, you said you were the _Right_ Hand of the Divine, yes? If you survived, isn't it possible she did as well?" Aaron asked.

"I was not actually at the Divine's side in the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and nor was she." Cassandra said, her words carrying a freight of bitterness and loathing. "Believe me, you will get your chance to talk with Sister Leliana during your interrogation and trial."

Varric frowned at Cassandra. He sympathized with her current situation, of course, despite his own interrogation. She wasn't _just_ a close-minded thug, or at least that had been his impression of her. But under this kind of strain? She was paranoid, furious, close to cracking. Not in any kind of shape to be thinking clearly or making decisions. She was barely in a mental state to be attending the Divine's funeral, much less fighting demons and investigating apostates. That couldn't stand, not with so much depending on them.

Varric interposed himself between the two—which would have been more effective if they hadn't both been able to see and reach completely over him—and spoke up before things got too heated.

"Can we all just _settle down_ for a moment? We all have a job to do, and that's to get to this rift. It's not too far ahead, just up that ridge." said Varric, pointing.

Aaron nodded, and Cassandra looked affronted but said nothing.

They fell into an uneasy silence as they ascended the steep slope.

Despite his intervention, Varric was maddeningly curious about the so-called Knight of Andraste. What could he possibly have wanted from Lady Nightingale? What was the urgent matter he wanted to talk about with her, and could it be related to the Breach?

Speculation ran through Varric's mind as he watched Aaron. Oddities just abounded about him. It seemed he didn't want to confirm or deny that he was a apostate mage, which was somewhat understandable if he was. But what apostates wear full suits of incredibly expensive silverite plate armor, or waltz into chantries to turn themselves in? Apostates were usually poor and solitary, and avoided the Chantry at all costs. The disguise, combined with his blunt, matter-of-fact manner, practically screamed that he was a Qunari or a Tal-Vashoth, the rebel Qunari that liked to cut off their horns. It wouldn't surprise Varric, given Aaron's height, and it would also explain his strange, deliberate, foreign-sounding manner of speech. Even his name sounded vaguely Qunari-ish, with that long 'Aa' sound they used so much. Still, Varric couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing.

Every apparent inconsistency just added to Varric's sense of intrigue. As he puzzled over it, the voices of various people, all imagined, offered their opinions and advice to him.

Aveline would have wanted to haul him off to a magistrate, and launch a by-the-book investigation whose crucial clue would end up being a long-forgotten piece of paperwork somewhere. _Even if he's innocent of this crime, he's definitely hiding something. Nobody can cover their tracks completely,_ she'd say.

Fenris would have wanted to kill him, just on principle— _He's a mage, the Breach is made of magic, and you want him tampering with it? Madness._

Hawke would have thought he was probably a patsy or hireling that had gotten in way over his head. She'd cleaned up plenty of similar messes. _I can sympathize,_ she'd say. _How many times have we tried to do a simple job which turned out to be a trap, or got way too complicated, or ended up doing the opposite of what we were trying for?_

Varric dismissed them; just because they talked to him didn't mean he always took their advice. Aaron was trouble, no doubt, it just remained to be seen if he was trouble in the same vein as a person like Hawke, or a person like Anders.

 _Now that's a disturbing thought._

Varric shuddered, and turned his attention to more pressing matters—like what the hell he was going to do about this mess. They passed the ravaged corpses of two soldiers and a templar as they crested the hill, which was dotted with fires.

Part of a building atop the hill came into view, now blasted into unrecognizable rubble, and the clangs and shouts of combat rang through the air. Nearby, a dozen soldiers were fighting a group of shades that were scattered around a floating, crackling cluster of green crystals, which is apparently what a tear into the Fade looked like.

Leliana and the apostate Solas were there as well, assisting the soldiers from a distance with magic and arrows. Leliana's distinctive white-fletched arrows unerringly found their targets in the chaos, and Solas' elegant, efficient movements sent purple orbs of lightning crashing into the shades. Together, they were doing more damage than the rest of the soldiers combined, and the shades had apparently taken notice. Three split off from the others and headed their way.

Not to be shown up with Aaron standing right beside him, Varric unslung Bianca and set to work, while Cassandra charged into the fray. She pounded the shade nearest Leliana with her shield, knocking it flat. With two quick thrusts of her sword, it was destroyed. Varric sighted down Bianca's length and pulled the trigger, feeling the familiar jump in his arms as the bolt flew out to strike the shade rearing up for a slash at Cassandra.

It was tough picking targets without accidentally hitting a soldier, but before long, they had turned the tide, and the last shade burst into motes of Fade-stuff. The rift reacted, bursting into an ethereal, billowing sheet of green light.

Aaron slowly came forward, seeming to be very wary of the surrounding soldiers, and Solas rushed to his side. Aaron tried to draw away, but Solas reached into the pelt and seized his shackled arm.

"Hurry! We haven't much time!" Solas said, pulling the larger mage towards the rift with surprising speed.

Solas thrust Aaron's hand at the rift, and the mark reacted, sparking to life. Brilliant streams of yellow-green energy burst out of the mark and connected with the rift. There was a crackle of static accompanied by a hum of increasing pitch. Something made the hair on the back of Varric's neck rise, and then the rift suddenly shattered, its unnatural green glow leaving the surroundings.

Varric stared in disbelief. Yesterday, he had watched for hours as various mages and soldiers tried their damnedest but couldn't produce the slightest effect on the rifts, which seemed to be bottomless wells of demons. Yet Aaron had destroyed one in mere moments.

 _Holy shit. He's the real deal._

The soldiers looked at each other and muttered lowly, relieved but unsure of what to say or do.

Cassandra bull-rushed through the pack of soldiers, battering them aside like rag dolls to reach Aaron at the center of the gaggle. "We are going to the Breach. _Now."_

Varric jogged up to them. _"Hold on,_ Seeker, we really need to think through this-"

"I agree," said Leliana, who slinked between the soldiers. Slinking and sneaking was what she did best, being a spymaster and all. At least, a better spymaster than Varric, by all reports. "We need to consider how best to position our forces to assail the Breach."

"What _exactly_ is there to consider!?" Cassandra roared. "The Breach grows larger with each passing hour! Most Holy's murderer is in our custody! The sooner we close the Breach, the fewer people die and the sooner we can bring him to justice!"

Leliana visibly winced. "Justinia was my purpose as well, Cassandra, but this is _not_ the time! We cannot afford to make mistakes—or alienate allies! We must keep Aaron _alive_ and _cooperating_ at all costs! If he dies, then there will be no stopping the Breach!"

It occurred to Varric that Aaron wasn't reacting to Leliana at all. Did he not even recognize the person that he had been looking for? No one had used her name yet, should Varric tell him in the hopes of finding out what the big issue was that brought him here in the first place?

"I may have some insight on that," Solas interjected before Varric could make up his mind, joining the circle of people who had gathered around. "I believe that by sealing the Breach, or at least preventing it from spreading, we can also prevent the mark from spreading and killing Aaron."

"Please. We must hurry. I want to do this." Aaron said, leaning on a half-collapsed wall for support. "I understand the need for caution, but I can feel myself weakening again. We may not get another chance if we don't act now."

"Right. Cassandra, fortify here with the other soldiers. I will tell Cullen it's time to gather the rest of our forces, everything we can muster." Leliana said, turning on her heel and sprinting off before Cassandra could say a word.

Well, shit. This was really happening. They were going to stop the Breach and save the world. Varric should have felt excited, or nervous, but instead he just felt a rising dread about what would happen after the dust settled, assuming they even survived.

Despite his apprehension, Varric knew he couldn't just walk out on this one, no matter how dangerous it was. He had to know more, or his curiosity would eat him alive. There was a story here, and he would get to the bottom of it.

After all, somebody had to write all this weird shit down, and who better than Varric Tethras?

* * *

 **A/N**

Varric's got his own theories about who this Aaron guy is. Are they right? Or is he something else? Leave a comment with your ideas about who or what Aaron could be! I don't think it would be revealing too much to say I'd be shocked if anyone can guess correctly before the big reveal in Aaron's POV chapter, which is still a ways off. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy!


	4. Chapter 4

One Step Ahead Chapter 4

* * *

They were finally safe.

Or, at least, that was what Leliana had thought when Commander Cullen led the main force of soldiers up to the hill, before they marched on the Breach. Solas insisted on helping Aaron, despite the latter's attempts to wave the elf off, but even so, Aaron's strength was obviously flagging. It lent them all a frustrated sense of urgency as he slowly made his way up to what remained of the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

Vast columns of half-melted black rock jutted upward and outward from a smoking crater, shading the few pieces of architecture that were still recognizable as such. The corpses soon became visible, twisted forms half-sunk into swirling pools of molten and re-solidified stone. They were frozen in agony, and most of them were unnaturally aflame like the wicks of a lantern, even a day after the blast. The choking smell of death, smoke, and burned flesh drifted on the wind. Leliana was all too familiar with that smell, and she tried to force down the revulsion and the bad memories. Aedan nearly dying in an Emissary's flames, the Tower filled with horrors and nightmares, the massacre at Denerim…

If only the Maker had sent her another vision, she could use the deeper meaning that it provided, the strength it had given her to face the darkness with her companions during the Fifth Blight. But where the Blight had been an epic battle against evil, this tragedy was so much more personal, so much more senseless, so much more implacable. People succumbing to sin and hatred, senselessly murdering each other, seemingly immune to all reason.

Was this how the Maker had felt when he turned his back on humanity? Had he felt this hopelessness, this crushing disappointment? Despite the terrible things she had seen and done in her past life as a bard, Leliana had never truly believed that people deserved the Maker's abandonment. She had always agreed with Andraste, that mankind only needed to be shown a better way.

But now Leliana just felt purposeless, like her one great contribution was over and done. She could rely on no more guidance, no more mercy from the Maker. What a _child_ she had been.

Beside her, Cassandra staggered as she slipped on loose stones of the embankment leading down into the remains of the temple. She just barely managed to right herself. The entire time, she did not take her watery eyes off of the twisted corpses, like she was unaware of her surroundings. Leliana was reminded that Cassandra had not seen the Temple up close yet, unlike her.

"Are you going to be okay, Seeker?" Varric asked gently.

"I…" Cassandra faltered, then fell to her hands and knees and retched, but only coughed up watery bile. She had obviously not eaten in quite some time, and that was affecting her in addition to all of the other stress and grief.

Leliana and Varric were immediately kneeling at her side, and even Aaron took a half-step forward, but he seemed to think better of it and stopped.

"It'll be okay, Cassandra. We have a good plan, we can save more people." Varric muttered so that only Cassandra and Leliana could hear him. Leliana wondered if he even believed it himself. She was finding it hard to.

"We'll get through this together. We're all here beside you, Cassandra." Leliana whispered, offering a handkerchief. It was pathetic as far as help was concerned, but it was the only thing she could think of.

Cassandra leaned on them both for support and stood, wiped her face, then nodded to Varric and Leliana. She spoke in a much firmer tone. "I need to be here. There is no other way."

Leliana nodded, then raised her voice to address the others around them. "Archers! Take up your positions around the Breach! Keep your bows strung and an arrow nocked, there could be demons at any time!"

As the archers moved into the waiting chamber, Varric included, Cassandra turned to Leliana. "Most Holy, has she…?"

Leliana shook her head. "No. Our scouts swept the area again, and we still found no trace of her body. At least, not that we recognize. The entire floor where she was is gone."

 _That's almost a blessing,_ Leliana thought. _She doesn't need to see that. No one does._

Cassandra looked to Aaron, standing behind them, supported by Solas. Her face was flushed red, and the accusation and hate was plain on her face.

"I don't remember what happened here," Aaron said helplessly. "I wish I did. I'm truly sorry."

Cassandra opened her mouth as if to respond, but she was interrupted before she could say a word.

 _"Seeker!_ We've got problems!" Varric shouted from the chamber beyond.

"What is it, Varric? Demons?" Cassandra shouted back, finally snapping back into her commanding role.

Varric jogged back into view. _"Red Lyrium."_ he said darkly.

Cassandra's frown deepened. "Red Lyrium? Like in Kirkwall? Are you certain?"

 _"Yes,"_ Varric grit out. It looked like he would crack a molar from the tension in his jaw. "There are huge spikes of it, jutting out of the ground in the corner of the chamber. It doesn't look as concentrated, or… _refined_ as the idol, but I don't doubt that this shit is just as deadly. And it makes me _really_ nervous, not knowing where it came from."

"It's possible that magic could have drawn on Lyrium beneath the Temple, corrupted it," Solas mused.

"You've encountered this before," Aaron observed.

"All too often." Varric growled. "And I can tell you right now, Seeker, we need to do something about it."

"We don't have time for that." Cassandra said flatly. "The Breach is the most pressing threat. We will press ahead, and try to be quick."

Cassandra flicked her eyes up to Aaron. "Let's not delay any longer. It is time for you to unmake what you have wrought."

* * *

Cassandra had visited the Temple of Sacred Ashes many times before, but the blast had gouged a massive crater in the center of the building and rendered it all but unrecognizable. She felt a pang of sadness as she stared out at the great statue of Andraste. It stood shattered, and yet the massive pieces floated in midair, slowly bobbing and turning like ice in a lake. At the center of it all was the enormous rift which led directly up into the Breach, wrapped in tendrils of light and magic, but seemingly still for the moment.

Red Lyrium was sprouting from a small corner on the right side of the room, looking for all the world like it had always been there, growing up like stalagmites. Cassandra noticed that Aaron seemed wary of it. He stood straighter, like an animal that had sensed something of interest.

"Whatever you do, don't touch it," warned Varric as they skirted what remained of the the stone banister to avoid it.

It was slow going, climbing down to reach the rift, particularly with Aaron being so weak. At least it gave the archers and swordsmen time to surround the Breach.

Cassandra was close to the rift, now, but nearly lost her footing when suddenly she was seized by a disorienting double-vision. There was movement in the corner of her eye, and she turned to see.

Vague, shadowy figures stood, their hands aimed directly up at Divine Justinia, who was floating, bound, and in great distress.

 _"Most Holy!"_ Cassandra gasped.

 _No,_ she realized a second later, _it is part of an illusion. The Fade, it's just a hallucination from the Fade._

The disappointment nearly shattered her wavering resolve.

A great, echoing voice boomed out. **"KEEP THE SACRIFICE STILL."**

Then she saw it: a towering, blazing shadow, with red fire for eyes.

Behind Cassandra, there was a crash as doors to the chamber were flung open. She whirled to look, and could see both the real opening where the doorway once stood, now blasted to pieces, and the slightly translucent, intact doors from the vision.

The shade of Aaron rushed in, just the same as the real one standing next to her, save for the waraxe strapped to his back and the lack of a mark or shackles on his hands. He halted suddenly at the sight before him. "What is—who are you!?" he exclaimed.

"Run while you can! Warn them!" the false Justinia cried out.

 **"ANOTHER WARDEN?"** the huge shadow said, sounding slightly confused. Then it pointed a long finger at the vision-Aaron. **"NO, HE IS NOT ONE OF OURS. SLAY HIM."**

Then, there was a burst of light, and the vision vanished. Cassandra jumped down the last ledge, landing braced on her feet. She straightened and rounded upon the prisoner.

"What _was_ that!? Tell me how you did this!" Cassandra yelled.

"I don't know if I caused that!" said Aaron, sounding confused.

 _"No,_ you didn't. At least, not directly." Solas quickly interjected. "I believe the Fade is ringing with echoes of what happened here. What we saw may have been distorted, but it reflects what really happened here. It seems our Aaron might not have been the one responsible after all."

"He sure looked like a bystander to me," added Varric. "I'd be more interested in that cabal and their freakish leader, whatever the hell kind of thing or demon that shadow was."

It seemed impossible, but there was no way that Cassandra could make the events she had witnessed fit the idea that Aaron had been solely and directly responsible for the Divine's death. On a level, that was almost _too_ convenient, and she suspected him of fabricating the vision. But how could he have done that?

"We can still use this," Varric said. "Aaron, can you make a list of everyone you think that might have been?"

Aaron shook his head. "I don't know any more than you do. If I remember something or have a theory, I will let you know."

That was a lie, Cassandra was certain. But for now, they needed to seal the rift.

Solas helped Aaron get into position below the rift, explaining how to awaken the rift so that it could be sealed completely. All around them, there was the sound of straining bowstrings and swords coming out of sheaths.

 _This was it_.

* * *

Varric couldn't stop himself from stumbling backwards as a truly _gargantuan_ Pride demon materialized out of the reopened rift.

In the back of his mind, there was a mad, despairing little part of him that marveled at the fact that he had faced enough Pride demons to recognize one on sight, and yet he was somehow still alive.

 _But I won't be for long if that thing looks my way._

Aaron retreated from the battle as fast as he could manage, while the Pride demon clasped its hands together and pulled them apart, lightning dancing between them. The Pride demon cackled, sounding disturbingly like a person, then unleashed its power.

Varric was already moving, leaping and rolling out of the way as a whip made of pure lightning scored the rock he had just ducked behind, chipping the stone. He could hear the crackling noise rising in pitch, and he peeked out of cover to see the Pride demon, massive arm outstretched, forming a ball of lightning that it shot at the archers above it.

Two were caught in the lightning, and they screamed briefly before falling silent.

Cassandra was at the demon's feet, suffused in the golden light of her Seeker power, gracefully but ineffectually stabbing and battering its huge, scaly hide with her sword and shield. She was balanced on her front foot to leap away the moment it counterattacked. Solas was not far away, twirling his staff with fluid grace and speed, casting spell after spell. They had both been caught in the path of the whip, and were bloodied and burned, but they still attacked relentlessly. Varric sighted down Bianca, praying that his shots could distract the demon from killing them.

Bianca's bolts shattered and deflected against the demon's skin, only every third bolt or so gaining any purchase at all. Leliana was having more success, her arrows flying truer and sinking deeper as she strafed across the uneven ground and loosed her shots with a smooth, practiced motion, but neither of their attacks drew the demon's notice away from Cassandra and Solas. It scored another glancing hit on Solas, leaving him practically insensate, unable to dodge—

Noticing Leliana's effectiveness and Solas' predicament gave Varric a deeply stupid idea. He tried to project his cockiness as well as his words as he shouted, "Like hell I'm going to let you show me up, Red! I'm the best archer that ever lived, and Bianca is the finest crossbow ever made!"

Varric seized on his fierce pride in Bianca, fueled his own arrogance. The Pride demon's seven eyes flicked in Varric's direction, picking up on the familiar emotion.

"Yeah, I'm right here, ugly! I've killed a _thousand_ demons like you!" Varric yelled, running out from cover. Being around heroes must have rubbed off on him, because trying to goad a Pride demon into rushing you by acting suicidally overconfident was just the kind of thing stupidly noble people did, wasn't it?

The Pride demon took a step towards Varric, nearly crushing Solas underfoot. Varric shot bolt after bolt as he fled, but to no avail. He quickly felt the cold stone of the wall pressing up against his back. The demon idly backhanded a soldier out of its path, sending him flying end over end into a rock pillar, and when he crumpled to the ground he didn't rise again. The demon leveled its hand at Varric, and a ball of lightning grew.

 _Well, shit._

Varric ducked as the rift suddenly exploded into a shower of light. The demon's lightning went wild as it was forced to its knees, and Varric was only slightly scorched as it passed by and burst harmlessly against the far wall. Varric looked around for the source of the disruption.

Aaron had circled around to disrupt the rift. Apparently, it had an effect on the demon.

Cassandra and the other soldiers rallied and fell upon the weakened demon, frantically attacking the stunned monster. Their blades cut deeper into the vulnerable demon, now that they could place their strikes and put real power behind them.

The demon gradually got to its feet again, but the damage had been done. The demon was wounded, and the fight became far less one-sided. Varric felt a glimmer of hope that they would win.

Then the shades arrived, and everything was thrown into chaos.

Every person was suddenly fighting for themselves, their attention split between the Pride demon and the new arrivals. The shades slinked forward with surprising speed, clawing and slashing, impossible to ignore. The Pride demon, wounded and lashing out, killed shades and soldiers indiscriminately.

Some the demons came for Aaron, who was now stripped of the protection of the soldiers that had gone in to press the attack on the Pride demon. Varric immediately began focusing his shots on one of them. Cassandra caught notice as well, and abandoned her attack on the Pride demon in mid-swing to rush towards the remaining demon.

It was too late. The shades were upon Aaron in a moment, and he collapsed to the ground.

Varric's heart was seized with panic. _No! If he dies, it's all over—_

With a flash of golden light, Aaron vanished.

 _What!?_

Varric finally recovered enough sense to start shooting at the Pride demon again, for all the good it did. The Pride demon was mauling the soldiers, who in turn pummeled it mercilessly. The battle against the titanic creature was as terrifying as it was mesmerizing, the huge masses of bone and muscle crashing against stone and flesh with impacts that shook the ground.

With all its attention focused on the soldiers, the Pride demon couldn't attack the remaining archers, who unleashed a barrage upon it, many resorting to exotic reserves of explosive shots, grenades, or flaming arrows.

The Pride demon lurched on its feet, gurgling. Electricity danced across its body, but it no longer had the swaggering, confident demeanor it did before. It reached out towards Varric, gathering lightning into another sphere.

 _Better make this count._ Varric stood and sighted down Bianca, slowly letting out a breath. The scorched, bleeding demon drew closer, crackling with electricity.

Varric pulled the trigger on pure ingrained instinct. Bianca jumped in his hands, as always making his heart miss a beat. The bolt flew true, and rammed straight through the Pride demon's seventh eye.

The demon swayed, then collapsed to its hands and knees with an great crash, and dissolved into nothingness. The rift reacted, changing from a dense amalgamation of crystals into a blinding cascade of green light.

And then Varric remembered to start breathing again. "Oh, Bianca, I never doubted you for a second." he gasped, giving her a quick, fierce kiss.

Cassandra, torn up but alive, rushed over to Varric.

 _"Where is he!?"_ she demanded. "Did you see where he went?! _How_ did he—"

Cassandra was answered by the unmistakable sound of the rift shrieking before shattering completely. Unlike the relatively tiny rift before, this enormous rift closed with a flash and a tremendous **_BOOM_** that reverberated through Varric's flesh and bone like he was no more solid than a wineskin. Everyone was bowled over by the blast.

Then, finally, everything settled. The coiling, angry spiral of energy between the giant rift and the Breach was nowhere to be seen, even though the Breach still loomed far overhead.

Varric picked himself up, trying not to think of the ringing in his ears or the spasming back pain and the soreness he would feel in the morning. Everyone else seemed to be all right and accounted for, except for Aaron.

 _Wait, why had the rift closed if he vanished?_

That was when he noticed everyone else suddenly seemed to be staring in the same direction, and he followed their gaze to see Aaron inexplicably standing atop of the shattered statue of Andraste, nearly on a level with where the rift once was.

Varric gaped in disbelief. _What in Andraste's tits just happened?_

A ragged cheer rose up from the soldiers, growing in intensity until it was a thunderous victory roar. Then, somehow, someone had started them chanting _"Knight! Knight! Knight!"_

"I think a legend was just born," Varric answered himself.

* * *

 **A/N**

And now events are going to start _really_ diverging from canon. Already, I'm starting to get comments and messages speculating about who or what Aaron could be, and they aren't things that I, or any of the characters for that matter, had even considered. I can't tell you how gratifying that is. But do please keep it to the reviews section, and know that this is a test! I will try to respond to all non-spoiler queries, but I won't give out spoilers, even in a private message, until someone manages to correctly guess for the right reasons. In all honesty, I would be truly amazed if someone manages to guess it correctly before the big reveal, but there are several other mini-mysteries to solve as well. For example, how on earth does Aaron seemingly "vanish" when that's pretty much impossible in the world of Thedas? The tools to solve these mysteries are all hidden in canon, so all you need to have done is played the games to be able to put together a theory! I look forward to seeing all the guesses, and seeing how many I can try to persuade with the characters' own theories, some of which may or may not end up being correct. As always, thanks to Bioware and thanks for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

One Step Ahead Chapter 5

* * *

Aaron had certainly made an impression. Standing atop the shattered statue of Andraste, his shackles left behind, Aaron looked out over the cheering soldiers. His emotions were completely unreadable past the armor, but Cassandra imagined he was unbearably smug in the unexpected adulation. It seemed obscene to her that the soldiers could switch from justified contempt to hero-worship in a matter of minutes.

Perhaps it wasn't _too_ surprising, in retrospect. Cassandra had already overheard the fierce debate in the Chantry and among the soldiers over whether Aaron was a knight sent to aid them, or the one responsible for the Breach. The side considering him guilty had apparently been dominant, which fit with the available evidence, but with this, a spark had ignited. It seemed that people on the side of the excitable young witness Tournay had been proven right all along, at least in the minds of the cheering, praying soldiers. They accepted the sudden and complete shift seemingly without question. It was unreal.

Vision or no vision, Cassandra would not leap to conclusions about Aaron's innocence just yet. Not without verifying each and every detail for herself. She was a Seeker of Truth, not a tavern-dwelling dwarf spinning a tale. She would have answers, whether she liked them or not.

* * *

It had only been when the cheering had died down that it occurred to Cassandra that getting Aaron down from such a great height would be awkward and difficult.

Aaron, it seemed, had other intentions.

Without so much as a nod or a wave or even a dramatic swish of his mantle, Aaron had turned on his heel and started moving around the perimeter of the crumbling statue, walking with alarming haste despite the precarious footing. He had ducked behind the statue and out of view quicker than anyone could react.

Cassandra broke into a run, trying to keep Aaron in view, but by the time she had circled the base of the statue, he was gone.

 _How?! How in the Maker's name does he keep disappearing!?_

Cassandra raced to climb out of the lowermost floor. She vaulted over rubble, deftly sprung from boulder to boulder as though she wasn't wearing full plate armor, and when she made it to the intact section of stairway, she took the steps three at a time. Her rush proved pointless, however. When she came to a level with the statue, it remained obvious that Aaron was not hiding out of sight anywhere. He was simply gone.

They'd all been had.

Aaron had been tortured and dying because of the giant rift at the Breach, and with it now sealed and the Breach in the sky seemingly calmed, the Chantry's usefulness to him had ended.

So he left. Just as quickly and inexplicably as he'd arrived.

 _I should have seen it coming! How could I have not seen it coming!?_

It was too much, just too much. As the confused murmur of the soldiers built to a roar, Cassandra's sudden scream of fury rose above them all, ringing painfully in her own ears. She heaved in a lungful of smoky acrid air, pressed her leather-gloved hands over her ears, and she screamed again, raw and pained and despairing. She screamed for all the times she had wanted to scream over the last two days, for the awful sickness inside of her, for the grief, the hatred, the terror, and for all the hopes that had been snatched away as the world itself came to an end.

Aaron was gone, and it was over. Cassandra had failed, and Thedas would have to face an unending tide of demons with no way to stop them.

* * *

Cassandra trudged back towards Haven in a fugue.

The chain of events would not stop repeating in her head. The more she thought of it, the more she realized there were countless ways she could have foreseen this, but almost no way she could have prevented it. This did not in any way make her feel absolved of the blame.

She had _known_ he possessed the ability to seemingly vanish. She had heard the testimony, and she had dismissed it in favor of something more mundane, more believable. But last night, when Aaron had arrived outside the chantry, that light and that noise—she hadn't even realized it at the time, but that had been him _appearing,_ somehow, in the way that he did. He had known exactly where she was, and did it behind the corner so she wouldn't see it, just like he had done on the statue. Even though she hadn't made that connection, seeing him vanish during the battle when those demons had piled upon him should have brought that capability and its obvious implication to the forefront of her mind.

She had simply _assumed_ that if Aaron tried to leave, by whatever arcane method he used on the soldiers before, that they would be able to stop him. Almost all magic took time to prepare and cast, and for something as spectacular as disappearing, it would presumably take a long time. Cassandra hadn't really taken the risk of him escaping _seriously_. He had seemed so weak, barely able to stand, his magic all but undetectable. She'd been so confident she could use her powers to stop him if need be, she had trusted Leliana to watch over him when she went to get Solas, and she had believed Solas when he assured her that he and the templar guards wouldn't allow him to escape, but it had been illusory. Aaron could have been gone any time he so desired. His seemingly instantaneous escape from the demons had proven that.

But when Aaron had decided to leave and turned to walk away, Cassandra had utterly failed to act, to think, to do anything whatsoever. She might as well have been somewhere else entirely. She might as well have been asleep, or dead. Compounded with the loss of the Conclave, she had never felt such a profound sense of uselessness and failure in her entire life. She was the Right Hand of the Divine, yet Most Holy was dead, and she had let the only one who could seal rifts get away without so much as lifting a finger to stop him.

 _So this is what it is like to hate yourself,_ she thought as the imprecations echoed through her mind.

Varric and Solas plodded alongside her in the filthy slushy snow path leading through the trees, the only ones remaining at her side after Leliana had gone ahead to Haven, and Cullen and the other soldiers had stayed behind at the temple. She had been too busy stewing in her self-recriminations to really notice them, but now Varric tugged at her sleeve insistently. "Seeker. _Seeker._ You there?"

"What do you want, Varric?" she said dejectedly.

"Chuckles has been talking to you. You've been ignoring him." Varric said, indicating the miffed elf.

Cassandra grunted and turned her attention to the elven apostate. "What is it you were saying?"

"I think I may have an idea of how Aaron may be... functioning, for lack of a better word." Solas said, looking as if the idea had left a bad taste in his mouth. At Cassandra's nod, he continued. "It is almost unthinkable that Aaron would be able to talk, walk, and perform magical feats with the mark draining his mana and physically harming him. He should have been unconscious all along, possibly for days. His resilience was something of a mystery to me until now, but I think he may have been using some form of blood magic, or something similar, in order to stay awake and perform magic, even while his mana and vitality was drained by the mark."

"Of course," Cassandra said darkly. It seemed obvious when he put it that way. "Do you have any idea how it is he keeps vanishing?"

Solas' frown deepened. "I can offer no certainty. Despite the enormous energy it would involve, moving through the world physically using the Fade—or somewhere adjacent—as a bridge is not impossible, and might be made more possible by the mark on his hand. That would have been my first guess, especially in light of how he was discovered, but during the battle I felt no evidence of his passage in the Veil, and such a thing would certainly leave a disturbance. Aside from that, magic is too varied for me to be able to guess at what ability or spell he might have employed to disappear. Any number of things can give the _appearance_ of vanishing, and I can only speculate, as I was... preoccupied... at the moment he apparently vanished. It could be a matter of rendering himself invisible, or blotting himself from our minds even as he stands before us, or something else entirely that we have failed to consider."

"Maybe he was a ghost all along," Varric suggested with a shrug. "He did come out of the Fade, after all."

"Varric, this is not one of your tales. If—" Cassandra cut herself off, her mouth dropping open as she caught sight of something in the corner of her eye.

Standing under a tree by the path was a man wearing a bear pelt around his shoulders and a hooded mantle over a suit of silverite armor.

 _It couldn't be. No one could possibly be that reckless or foolhardy._

The man approached them at a measured pace.

"Hello," Aaron said, his raspy voice instantly recognizable.

Inside, Cassandra was warring over how to react to this. Part of her wanted to do all the things she had failed to do before- smite him, or set the magic in his blood aflame. Part of her wanted to know why he had returned. A tiny, indignant part of her wanted to beat him senseless for having the gall to just casually say _'hello'_ to them like _nothing had happened._ And part of her was screaming at the rest for doing nothing, _again_. That was what finally gave her the impetus to break out of her hesitation.

Cassandra gave no outward sign, but she drew in her power to strike him at the slightest indication he would vanish. She very deliberately held her arm out away from her sword so as not to scare him off.

"Explain yourself." Cassandra said, her voice coming out much more level than her emotions should have allowed.

"I wanted to apologize for leaving you back there. I don't know what I was thinking. Well, actually, I _do_ know what I was thinking, and it sort of made sense in context, but soon after I left, I realized it wasn't the correct course of action." Aaron rambled, shaking his head. "I was… being in front of all those people made me very nervous. I wasn't thinking clearly."

"And you _still_ aren't, apparently," Varric said, chuckling incredulously. "Seriously? Escaping _twice_ , and coming back _twice?_ Who _does_ that?"

"Someone capable of changing their mind," Aaron said, sounding a little relieved.

Solas looked baffled. "I confess, though I find myself pleasantly surprised, this is _certainly_ not what I had expected. The Breach is stable, and the mark is no longer killing you, so why return? Surely you must realize that the Chantry considers you a criminal!"

Underneath the folds of his mantle, Aaron crossed his arms with a faint clatter of metal on metal. "I am aware, but there are more important considerations than my personal liberty. I thought about it, and if I were to flee, I could accomplish nothing I set out to do. These rifts are obviously a threat to _everyone,_ and I can't seal them alone. Nor would I be able to speak to Leliana, which was my whole purpose for being here. Also, fleeing would make people more likely to consider me guilty of a crime I am _reasonably_ certain I did not commit. Thus, I consider it worth the risk to cooperate with you."

"You're not even a _little_ offended that the Chantry wants you to be tried and executed?" Varric asked.

Cassandra shot Varric a venomous glare. He grinned and shrugged.

"In light of the vision, and my assistance in closing the Breach, I think I could mount a plausible defense in a trial," Aaron said, shifting nervously from foot to foot. "Even so, I imagine I would be more reluctant to rejoin you if I didn't believe I could simply escape again. Is that feeling justified? There is only one way to find out. So here I am, taking a non-negligible risk, for what it is worth. Will you accept my parole, with my apologies?"

Cassandra didn't want to just say _yes,_ that felt wrong, like she was letting him get away with it. But he was offering to go with them willingly... Or at least he wanted them to _think_ that he was going to cooperate. Either way, could she get away with imposing conditions on him? That didn't seem wise, either—

"Absolutely," Varric answered jovially. "Welcome aboard, Fluffy!"

Cassandra sent him a mortified look, simultaneously grateful and infuriated with him for acting unilaterally while she vacillated, and more than a little bothered that Varric had deigned to give Aaron the nickname _Fluffy._ Varric gave her a maddening wink, which made her let out a disgusted noise halfway between a grunt and a sigh.

Varric only smiled wider.

* * *

The four of them fell into an uncomfortable silence as they came down the mountain. Cassandra took the opportunity to reflect.

Aaron… didn't make sense. She thought she could see his motives before, but now she was just left feeling sick and confused. It was like she was seeing two different images of the same thing: one a maleficar acting virtuous to manipulate them somehow, the other an innocent bystander who was simply caught in this maelstrom, just like the rest of them.

The former possibility was looking more remote the more Cassandra examined it, but she couldn't quite bring herself to let it go. She wasn't mad; she had _seen_ the vision, yes, and she knew his return wouldn't make any sense if he was evil, but it didn't seem to matter to her stubborn mind. She couldn't let herself _not_ hate him. That would… what?

 _That would mean that I no longer have him to blame. It would mean facing the grief and despair instead._

Cassandra knew as soon as she thought it that this was the real reason. There was no point in denying it. Did that make her a terrible person? What did Aaron ever do to deserve her loathing?

 _Probably a lot, considering he is an apostate mage… But nothing related to the reasons I actually hate him._

Aaron had been far more cooperative and calm than she had any right to expect from someone in his position. That in itself had seemed quite suspicious, but could be plausibly explained by his ability to escape at any time—or perhaps it was something else entirely, like shock. Cassandra had seen many people react to dire circumstances in a variety of ways, and seen many more over the last two days. Some people broke spectacularly, and others showed little external reaction at all. Leliana was one of the latter. Cassandra thought she was somewhere in between. But they were, all of them, just as broken on the inside.

A large and growing part of Cassandra simply didn't want to feel this hatred anymore. She was exhausted and could barely muster up the effort to keep moving. Not since her brother Anthony died had she felt such emptiness, such loneliness. Leliana, Cullen, even Josephine—they were more _allies_ than they were friends. And her family, that large and distant clan of Pentaghasts, offered no solace. Uncle Vestalus was the only one who truly loved her, in his own well-meaning but misguided way, but she and the Mortalitasi who took her in had too much acrimony and too many leagues between them, now.

It was a cruel irony that _Varric,_ of all people, was the closest person at hand with whom she shared so much as a contentious emotional connection, and she wasn't even certain whether she liked him or not. Regardless, she identified more with the characters in his books than with most of the people she knew, and that was just pathetic now that she realized it. Still, Varric and Leliana had been there for her when she had fallen at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

But what connections did this Aaron have? What must he be feeling right now? Hunted, hated, and now a hero? As the four of them approached the improvised tent barracks that had sprouted up around the village of Haven, she resolved to subject Aaron to questioning and find out what kind of person he _really_ was. She would give him a chance, one chance, to prove to her that he was truly not responsible for this nightmare they now found themselves in.

Cassandra started mentally preparing for the interrogation.

* * *

 **A/N**

Solas speculates on some minor mysteries, and the hits keep on coming for Cassandra. We're going to start seeing a lot more characters offer up a lot more radically different theories about who Aaron is and how he does what he does. As ever, I encourage you to leave a review with your personal theory and the evidence you see for it. The first to guess correctly and for the right reasons are entitled to a prize after the reveal, plus the priceless feeling of being proven right. Good luck, and happy nitpicking!


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

* * *

When the four of them had passed the gates of Haven once more, the sun had nearly set. Soldiers huddled around fires watched with wide eyes as the odd group went by.

Cassandra told a very surprised Leliana to call off the search. Then she told Aaron he would answer her questions.

Aaron had replied that he was here of his own free will, that he didn't expect to change his mind overnight, and that she would eat something and get a full night's sleep first before he answered anything.

Varric, Leliana, and Solas had strongly agreed, and Cassandra had relented.

Now it was dawn, and Cassandra obstinately sat guard outside the door to the bedroom that Aaron had appropriated in the chantry, her body feeling almost human again, but her mind no less emotionally burnt out. She was waiting to ambush Aaron as soon as he came out, so she could start the interrogation immediately.

Just as Cassandra was starting to become suspicious that the room was empty and Aaron had stolen away yet again, the iron door handle turned with a creak, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin.

Cassandra relaxed her death grip on the armrests and prepared to greet him, but the door didn't move. The door handle turned no further, as if Aaron was frozen on the other side. Cassandra stared at the handle, waiting as the stillness stretched on, and on, and yet on, long after the point of awkwardness. As the seconds ticked slowly by, she became driven by an abstract curiosity of how long Aaron was going to wait with his hand on the door handle, trying to imagine what could _possibly_ be going through his mind.

After it seemed an entire Age had passed, the handle finally turned all the way, and the door swung open.

Cassandra was very surprised to see a nearly unrecognizable Aaron step out. On second glance, he hadn't actually _changed_ anything he had been wearing, but his presentation and demeanor were completely different. He was standing straighter, no longer looking like he wanted to run or fight. He had lowered his hood and pulled his gray, concealing mantle back over his shoulders like a cape, exposing the entirety of his gleaming silverite armor. It was of an older, simpler style than modern armors, which lent it a more sleek, natural quality, like the armor was his actual _body_ rather than a great heap of ornaments he was wearing. Cassandra would never have admitted it, but he looked every inch the heroic knight of legend that people were already making him out to be.

The effect was ruined the moment he spoke.

"Ah, hello, Seeker Cassandra." he rasped.

Cassandra frowned. If she had tried to explain why his voice seemed so _wrong_ to her, she would have sounded incredibly petty. It had nothing to do with his inflection, or tone, or even what he said. In fact, he tended to speak very mildly, and what he said sounded almost reasonable, but his actual voice just sounded _evil,_ so cracked and deep and hoarse, like he was a villain straight out of one of Varric's stories.

"I'm glad you seem to have recovered," Aaron continued, blithely unaware of Cassandra's distrustful glare. "We should—"

Aaron stopped with a startled choking noise. As he had spoken to Cassandra, the entire chantry had fallen silent, every eye in the building turning to stare at him, and he had just noticed it.

Aaron's façade of confidence visibly shattered. His hands went to the heavy cloth of his mantle, gripping it tightly and drawing it closer around himself, somehow making the gesture seem mortified, like he was covering up his nakedness, despite not an inch of his skin being visible. He still stood ramrod straight rather than his usual slouch, but it now made him look more like a petrified deer rather than a confident knight.

Cassandra stood, putting herself in front of Aaron's line of sight. "We will go someplace where we can speak privately," she said firmly, reaching out to steer him along with her. Aaron flinched away from her touch.

Frowning deeper, Cassandra instead turned the motion into a gesture at the door across the chantry, with stairs leading underground.

The incongruous addition of a dungeon to a holy site of the Maker had been a legacy of the dragon cult of so-called 'Disciples of Andraste' that had made Haven their home for centuries. It wouldn't accomplish anything to actually put Aaron into one of those dark cages, but Cassandra could still use the place to interrogate him without being overheard. The impromptu war room in the back of the chantry was a joke; the door might as well have been parchment for all that it blocked the voices of those inside.

Cassandra led Aaron down the long stone stairs, into the dimly lit corridor leading to the cells. Aaron had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the hanging braziers.

Cassandra preferred to stand during interrogations, as she believed it helped to make her more intimidating, but she decided against it here and sat down on a crate.

Aaron, for his part, elected to stand.

Cassandra began with the bait she had decided to lead with. "You claim to not remember anything, Aaron, and I will assume for the moment that this is the truth. So tell me, based on what you _do_ remember, would you have any motive to attack or disrupt the Conclave? Given your return and the vision we saw, I am willing to consider the possibility that this was an unintended consequence. A mistake."

Aaron lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug. "I can think of no motive."

"It would be understandable if you had held a grudge," Cassandra said, doing her best to sound sympathetic. "The Templar Order has perpetrated many abuses. Atrocities, even. And you are an apostate. By your very nature, you would be hunted. Targeted by them."

Cassandra had no idea whether he would catch on to what she was doing or not. She was mostly trying to place a lower bound on Aaron's intelligence. Would he confess to a sympathetic ear? Would he gloat if he perceived no threat from her? Cassandra had once thought such a trick would never work, that no one could be that stupid, before her mentors had demonstrated the depressing truth of it before her, time and time again. However he responded, it would tell her something valuable.

"I did not wish the peace negotiations to be disrupted. This war, from what I have heard of it, is an indefensible waste of life. It is hard for me to put to words how dismayed I am that the peace negotiations were destroyed in such a way." Aaron said, with such absolute disgust that Cassandra was unsure whether he was genuine or simply a fantastic actor.

"Perhaps peace is _exactly_ what you wanted to prevent," Cassandra said in a low voice, springing the trap. "Perhaps you wanted the war to continue. Perhaps you didn't want the mages to concede to the templars, but to _win!"_

"That doesn't make any sense." Aaron said flatly.

"Recent history proves that radicals are willing to do terrible things if they think it will allow their side to win." said Cassandra, a chill danger entering her voice. The parallels with Anders and Kirkwall were impossible to ignore. Chantries getting blown up by magic, extremists on both sides determined to destroy all chances of peace…

 _"No,_ that isn't what I meant." Aaron said vehemently. "Of course, I would prefer peace from an ethical standpoint, but even assuming I wanted the mages to win _and_ I was willing to commit an atrocity to make it happen, destroying the Conclave still wouldn't be _logical_. From what I could tell, both sides agreed the mages were _losing_ the war. Destroying the Conclave would only make their chances of survival and concessions _worse_. I cannot remember what happened, but that's no reason to start believing I suddenly turned evil. Or _stupid,_ for that matter."

Cassandra's estimation of Aaron's cunning rose, and with it, his level of threat. It was so easy to believe he was a dim-witted brute with his slow, deliberate manner of speech and his bizarrely selective ignorance, yet he had dismantled Cassandra's argument so precisely that she could not find fault in his logic. It was clear that Aaron chose every single word with exceeding care, and considered things from many different perspectives. Pinning him would be difficult.

Cassandra gathered her thoughts, and rallied. "That may be true, but you _are_ an apostate. Pacifistic apostates do not last long, hated and pursued as they are. Templars are your _enemy,_ whether you want them to be or not. Perhaps you were cornered by a zealot, felt threatened…"

"That does not apply to someone with abilities such as mine. I cannot be found unless I want to be, so I have no personal experience being hunted by templars. I bear them no particular love or hate, beyond my basic respect for their lives. Nor do I have strong feelings about the Chantry, for that matter. I know too little of them. Moreover, I don't see how a personal bias against templars would justify attacking the Conclave." Aaron stated calmly.

Cassandra felt strangely unbalanced, as if Aaron was egregiously deviating from the script she had heard so many other apostates and maleficar recite. She had heard maleficar rage and scream and cry at their captors. She had seen them lash out like cornered animals, choosing death at the templars' hands. She had heard them lie and proclaim they were devout Andrastians, standing falsely accused, who respected and honored the templars for their work. She had seen them repent, beg for mercy, swear to reform their ways. They did _not_ express ambivalence towards templars and Chantry both, not that she had ever seen or heard of. The strangeness of it left her searching for a proper response. If nothing else, it made no _strategic_ sense, unless he was trying to sound more sincere about his leanings than the mages who unconvincingly claimed loyalty. But that sort of ploy would be dangerous, as claiming to be an ignorant heathen would easily be taken as all but a declaration of guilt by most investigators.

"What would you have difficulty justifying such an action to? The Maker? The Qun? Or… Korth, I suppose?" Cassandra asked.

"To _myself,_ of course," Aaron said, sounding somewhat offended. "Imagine yourself in my place. If many scores of innocent people were murdered and you had somehow survived the event, would you believe that _you_ had killed all those people, just because you couldn't remember _not_ doing it?"

The question caught Cassandra off guard. She actually _hadn't_ thought of it that way, not even the slightest bit. "Of course not. But despite my abilities, I am not a mage. I am not dangerous in the way that you are dangerous."

Aaron lifted his head slightly, as if he were looking down his nose at her. "Solas was correct, I am no more capable of doing… _that_ … than you are, mage or no. I don't even know how one would even _accomplish_ such a thing."

Cassandra rested her arm on the barrel sitting next to her and drummed her fingers on it, thinking of how to proceed. Aaron stood by, his arms folded politely behind him, waiting for her response.

"That's assuming you're telling me the truth," Cassandra said. "I still have my doubts. It seems to me that while you may not have _intended_ for any of this to happen, you bear more responsibility than you claim, and you are pretending not to remember to protect yourself."

Aaron shrugged. "Well, all I can say is that if there _were_ a compelling justification—and I actually remembered it—I would tell you, because that would be my only extenuating circumstance."

Cassandra shook her head. He wasn't going to confess or change his story. Whether that meant he was successfully keeping track of his lies, or consistently telling the truth, was impossible to determine just by talking to him. "I have it on good authority that you only managed to remain conscious through this… this _ordeal_ by using blood magic. Do you have an excuse for _that_ as well?" she asked, not bothering to disguise her skepticism.

"That was not blood magic. Blood magic could have made my situation _worse,_ actually, as it would further sap my vitality, which was already sorely taxed. I believe that my mana was being drained to preserve me, leaving me exhausted but keeping me alive. Entirely unconsciously, mind you, as I don't know any blood magic or healing magic. Even if I did, I wouldn't be able to use either to revive myself after I passed out those two times."

 _How terribly convenient,_ Cassandra thought. She had never heard of anyone doing such a thing unconsciously, but then again, magic and magic-users were enormously diverse. She couldn't point to any one thing he had said and expose it for a lie, but still, she got the impression that he was obfuscating something.

"And how is it you manage to keep disappearing? Teleportation shouldn't be possible for a single mage to do, not without thousands of blood sacrifices and half the Lyrium in the Tevinter Imperium. It must be some kind of trick. Or am I supposed to believe that you are just that powerful?" Cassandra asked, raising an eyebrow.

Aaron cocked his head, the movement making him look like a giant, shiny mantis. "What I do does not require that kind of power. My own skills with magic are rather crude, actually. Crude, but effective. It would be foolish for me to speak on my _'trick'_ any further, and fritter away my advantage. No offense, but the maximum number of people that can keep a secret is one."

Cassandra hadn't really expected him to answer the question, but his refusal still stung. Cassandra searched for a question which he was more likely to answer.

"Fine. Now, you claim to have come to the Conclave in search of Sister Leliana. But why come to the Conclave, specifically? Why not simply send her a letter?" Cassandra asked.

"It concerns matters I would rather not discuss with anyone other than Sister Leliana, or put in writing. I came to the Conclave because I suspected she'd be there, attending to the Divine. Otherwise, I did not know how to contact her. If I tried to reach her through other channels the Chantry, well... my vague requests for an audience would have been ignored, or would have drawn the _wrong kind_ of attention, as you might imagine." Aaron said, with great reluctance. "Suffice to say, my original purpose would have been completely forgotten in the distraction that followed."

That answer did _not_ suffice for Cassandra, in fact. She sat back, thinking through what she had heard. The only sound between them was the crackling of the torches. Usually she wouldn't let such pauses stand in an investigation—she liked to keep them talking—but Aaron was not a normal suspect.

"If you can't tell me why it is you are seeking out Leliana, then can you at least tell me more of yourself?" Cassandra asked, making it a request and not a demand. "Where are you from? What do you _do?_ Are you a soldier, a mercenary of some sort?"

"I was _born_ in Ferelden," Aaron replied cryptically. "But most of my life I spent in the Frostbacks, alone. I am something of an independent scholar, you see, and I spend most of my time exploring forgotten places and studying what I find there."

 _An independent scholar?_ For all that he chose his words with care, he could not have seemed less scholarly if he _tried_. And what kind of scholar didn't know about the very nation in which he lived, or its religion? The description sounded more like a looter or a grave-robber to Cassandra, but nonetheless she forced a thin, tight smile. "It seems I may have been wrong about your guilt, Aaron. But you can hardly blame me for being suspicious, after all of this."

Aaron waved a hand dismissively. "Of course I don't blame you. I would be the first to admit that I was the primary suspect, and my… _circumspect_ manner can't have helped."

Cassandra smiled fully, then, partially in relief and partially to put him at ease. "Indeed, it occurs to me that I know practically nothing about you. Not your guilt or innocence, but you as a _person_. Maker's breath, I can't even tell if you're a hornless Qunari, or just a tall human under that armor! Would you take off your helmet, so we can talk face-to-face?"

Aaron seemed to withdraw deeper into the folds of his mantle. He gave a heavy, ragged sigh. "Seeker Pentaghast, I apologize, but I have no choice but to refuse."

Cassandra blinked. "What?"

"I truly am sorry, but my willing assistance is conditional on the specific details of my life remaining private." Aaron said, his words apologetic, but his tone hard and precise.

Cassandra felt like she had been smashed in the face by a maul. Her growing belief in Aaron's innocence was cast into utter confusion.

 _He knows that I know he is an apostate—what other reason could he have to hide who he is? What could possibly be so bad…? Is he a criminal? Is he involved in the Breach after all?_

"Explain." Cassandra gritted through her teeth. "I am a Seeker of Truth. I have the ability to incapacitate a mage, to set the Lyrium in their blood aflame or bring down a Holy Smite. Do _not_ make me test this power against you."

Aaron raised his hands in a gesture of peace, a gesture which was rather undercut by the threatening scar of dangerous magic on his hand and the cruel, spiked gauntlets he wore. "I am not here to fight, Cassandra. I regret the necessity, but if you try to force me to tell you about myself or remove my armor… then I will vanish again, and never come back."

Cassandra felt a sick sinking sensation as the words heralded her worst scenario coming to pass. Aaron _knew_ the leverage he held was nearly absolute, he _knew_ she couldn't press the issue without risking him disappearing—but still, Cassandra couldn't help herself. This was _wrong_. "You—how _dare_ you?! Threatening the very _world,_ just to keep your own _secrets!?"_ Cassandra hissed.

"That is _not_ what is happening here!" Aaron seethed. "I am not doing this just for my _own_ sake! I have no _choice!_ Seeker Cassandra, _listen to me!_ I do not believe I had any part of this. I consider it _extremely_ unlikely that my involvement this disaster is anything other than mere _chance_. If that estimation were to change, you will be the _first to know."_

"You expect me to leave that to _your_ judgement?!" Cassandra demanded, coming to her feet.

"I expect you to leave it to _Sister Leliana's_ judgement, and her discretion!" Aaron countered, his words coming faster. "All you need to know is this: if my origin becomes known and my mission fails, _people will die_. I _cannot_ allow that. _Never_. Not even if you put me to the torch!"

Cassandra went still as her outrage was quenched by the cold chills of horror running down her spine. Aaron implicitly believed that being _burned alive_ at Cassandra's hands was better than if she knew who he was. It was all but a confession of the worst, nameless suspicions she had about him, that he was hiding something other than the fact he was an apostate, which was bad enough already. But was he _right?_ Would she destroy him to learn his secret, or destroy him when she discovered it?

Now that she had posed the question to herself, she realized the answer was no. She didn't destroy him when she had believed him guilty, and their need for his assistance hadn't changed.

Cassandra rubbed at her temples. "Just tell me what it is that you want. We are in no position to refuse, as you have no doubt gathered."

"Please understand, it is not my intent to blackmail you," Aaron said, sounding pained. "Truly, I only want to help, but in order to do that, my past _must_ remain private. If Sister Leliana were to speak with me, _alone,_ and she decided not to tell you what passed between us, would you abide by her choice?"

Cassandra actually had to stop and think before she answered that. "…The reason there is a separate Right Hand and Left Hand of the Divine is because we understand that some secrets _must_ be kept, for the good of all. I would trust Leliana to make such a determination, yes. But I will only hear the answer from her."

"Then let it be. Is she nearby?" Aaron asked.

"Yes," Cassandra said, her threat suddenly very dry. "In fact, you met her already."

There was a short pause.

"The archer in mail?" Aaron ventured.

"Yes, that is she." Cassandra said, walking past him. "Stay here, and I will go fetch her. I am _anxious_ to hear what she makes of you."

The one remaining bit of satisfaction that Cassandra took as she went back up the stone stairs was that Leliana was among the most terrifyingly intelligent people she had ever met. If Aaron was hiding something, Leliana _would_ find it, if she didn't know already. Aaron's clever little ploys and evasions would only give her more hints and clues to follow. She would crush him like an insect, and then Cassandra would finally find out what Aaron was hiding.

After finding Leliana and sending her to talk with Aaron, Cassandra planted herself in a chair at the entrance to the stairs, guarding the two below and desperately wishing she could hear what they were talking about.

After a few minutes of massaging her headache and restlessly bouncing her legs, Cassandra set herself to imagining what Leliana would do with the information Cassandra had. Perhaps if she imagined what Leliana would do, she could see it for herself.

Cassandra reflected on what she had learned, all the evidence she had found. The most important clue, she was certain, was the fact that Aaron was a mage. That one fact would have dictated the course of his entire life, no matter how much he seemed to hide it or avoid the subject.

As a Seeker, she had seen mages fail in countless ways, regardless of their intentions. Seeking blood magic, demonic aid, or other ways to bolster their own power was only the most well-known reason they were dangerous. What was less well known, but perhaps just as common, were the mages who, in trying to hide or suppress their powers, also failed spectacularly. That was one of the primary reasons why the Chantry trained mages to control their powers in the Circle, rather than prohibiting them from practicing magic entirely.

Aaron, despite his protestations of being a scholar, dressed and comported himself as a warrior. It was all but certain that he had trained and fought with blades instead of magic, and had been trying to keep his identity hidden, possibly for years. Mages like Aaron who did not train or use their talents always ended up manifesting them in two ways. The first group became what were known as hedge mages, a term which was sometimes used interchangeably with apostates. This wasn't quite correct. Apostates had training, in the Circle or otherwise, and could control their magic. Hedge mages, by contrast, were people who had no training and had consequently manifested strange, often unique powers that were difficult to control. _Crude but effective,_ as Aaron had called his own abilities.

The second group of untrained mages, of course, became abominations.

Cassandra needn't have read of Anders in _The Tale of the Champion_ to know that abominations often looked and acted just like ordinary mages and people. She had seen it herself, many times—a possessed mage that looked human at a glance, but with a demonic true form hiding just beneath the surface. Often they had indications that they were possessed, such as altered voices, discolored skin, and inhuman eyes.

These were all features that Aaron could easily hide with a suit of armor… save for his voice, which was maddeningly on the very edge of being justifiably labeled unnatural. That alone was inconclusive.

But if Aaron knew to take such precautions, it would imply he hadn't been possessed _at_ the Conclave. It implied that he knew he had been possessed all along, that he had taken precautions before he went to the Conclave, and that he may have been taken over by—

The epiphany hit her like a bolt of lightning.

What if Aaron had been telling the truth all along, that he really _didn't_ remember what had happened at the Conclave? But what if it was because part of him literally _didn't participate?_ According to Varric, Anders often hadn't remembered what Justice or Vengeance had done when they took over his body.

Now that Cassandra thought of it, the explanation made perfect sense. But what would she _do_ about it? Even if Aaron was indeed an abomination, as seemed likely, that didn't change the fact that they needed his power to close the Breach.

Cassandra abruptly stood from her chair, but something stopped her from flinging the door open to confront the possible abomination that was down there, _alone with Leliana._ Why wasn't she going down there right now to rescue her?

 _Perhaps this is too hasty._

It was the seed of doubt which stayed her. It was still _possible_ that Aaron was simply a hedge mage. It was still _possible_ that she herself was biased, still trying to find a way to blame Aaron. If she went down there and accused Aaron of being an abomination… more likely than not, he would be _gone._

And there was still one thing that him being an abomination would not explain: the vision at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, that nightmarish presence that Aaron seemed unprepared to face. There was more going on here than Cassandra could see, and she could not afford to leap to conclusions.

With a great effort of will, Cassandra sat back down.

 _Maker, please, at least let Leliana make sense of this._ Cassandra silently prayed.

It was at that moment that the front doors of the chantry opened to admit a pair of templars and Chancellor Roderick Avignon, who instantly located Cassandra amidst the crowd. The little man began marching towards her in a towering rage, the look in his eyes promising dire imprecations, and much shouting.

 _Maker, why?_ Cassandra thought indignantly.

If Roderick was here, then that could only mean he was going to make a move to take control, as he'd been threatening to do over the last two days. She and Leliana might have to move forward with their nascent plans to declare an Inquisition. And considering the unbelievably delicate situation Leliana was currently managing, Cassandra might have to face Roderick and declare the Inquisition unilaterally.

 _"World-making Glory, how shall your children apology make?"_ Cassandra recited under her breath.

* * *

 **A/N**

While Cassandra and Leliana play detective, external forces conspire to throw things into chaos. Next time, we get to see through Leliana and Roderick's eyes, and Aaron discloses what his true purpose is for reaching out to Leliana. As always, I challenge you to try to figure out the mysteries before they're revealed!


	7. Chapter 7

One Step Ahead Chapter 7

* * *

Leliana shivered slightly as she descended into the dark stone dungeons of the Haven chantry. She remembered when she had first come to Haven with Aedan Cousland, the Hero of Ferelden- though he had only been a young, inexperienced Grey Warden then.

 _Maker, it seems so different now._

 _Has the world changed, or have I?_

The Haven they had first encountered was a nightmare hidden in plain sight. She had known something was terribly wrong from the beginning, just as she felt the sick sensation that something was terribly wrong now.

They reached the dungeons. Leliana turned to face the man calling himself Aaron. Even with his eyes concealed behind black fabric, he seemed unable to meet her gaze.

Leliana began losing her patience with him. "Well, you wanted an audience from me, and here I am. Now tell me what this was all about, and _Maker help you_ if I deem your message unworthy of all this death and suffering."

"I... would not have sought you out if I did not think your action was a dire necessity," Aaron said, bowing his head slightly. "This has nothing to do with religion or politics. I was searching for a companion of the Warden-Commander, and you were the best candidate."

 _So this is because of Aedan? That only confirms my suspicions about you,_ Leliana thought grimly. _For now, the best tactic would be to keep you off balance._

"If you came to bring me word of the Grey Wardens' disappearance, then you are wasting my time. I have known about it for months, and have been undergoing my own investigations into the matter. Unless you have relevant information to add, I suggest you leave such matters to me." Leliana said coldly.

Aaron straightened slightly, and was silent for a moment beifore speaking. "That was part of it, yes. But I have less information than you about why the Wardens disappeared, I suspect. No, this concerns another matter—I sought you out because you were the only one who might be able to tell me how to contact the Warden-Commander."

"Aedan is in the unexplored reaches of the West," Leliana lied effortlessly. "He is beyond your reach, or mine. I would not put you in contact with him even if I knew how, not until I knew exactly who and what you are. What is this _really_ about?"

"By now you know that I am something of a scholar, yes? To make a long story short, I have made a discovery of vital importance. Several, in fact. Not this," said Aaron, dismissively waving his marked hand, "But incredibly consequential nonetheless. I am... not the person to act upon these discoveries, but the Warden-Commander most definitely is. I would trust no other with what I have found."

If that was bait, it was remarkably effective. Leliana burned with curiosity, but she stifled it. Right now, the Breach was more important than whatever tale Aaron could come up with to tempt her into contacting Aedan. For all she knew, it could be a trap intended to flush out the last remaining Grey Warden.

"I cannot act on these... concerns... until you tell me just who you are." Leliana said bluntly.

Aaron seemed to be growing more nervous. He wrung his spiky gauntlets together, the silverite making a faint screeching noise, and he still wouldn't look directly at her. "Forgive me. Letting this become known would endanger... far too much. But I am also afraid of what will happen if I do not offer you full disclosure right away, and you discover something on your own. You are the only one here that _might_ be able to understand, but I'm not certain you know what I _think_ you do. That, and I have no way of knowing how you will react if you _don't_ already know. So, I'm essentially trapped until I know more. Does that make sense?"

Leliana nodded. She had seen this scenario so many times, it had actually become a clichéd tactic in the Game—using the pretext of a fake confession to probe someone's knowledge. Countering it was child's play; Leliana would simply play along and keep her cards close to her chest.

"I am a spymaster. Keeping secrets is what I do. And you already know I have every motive to keep you safe." Leliana said, staring unblinkingly up at the expressionless mask of metal Aaron wore.

"This... framing my explanation would be a lot simpler if you told me what you already know, or have guessed." Aaron said hesitantly.

Leliana crossed her arms. "If I were to guess, I would say you are a Grey Warden, either an exile or a deserter. And you are probably hearing the Calling, as well."

Aaron staggered back a step, then went completely rigid.

Leliana gave him a chastising look and scoffed. "Did you think you were being subtle? I would have to be a very poor spymaster indeed to miss so many hints. You did not know me, but you knew _of_ me through the Hero of Ferelden, the Grey Warden who ended the Fifth Blight. I was there when the Breach showed us that vision, and the shadowed figure asked if you were 'another Warden.' Your armor is very expensive, not the gear of a common warrior or mercenary, and certainly not an apostate living on the fringes of society. It is also made of Silverite, which is favored by Grey Wardens for its its natural ability to cleanse the Blight. The Wardens are the only legitimate organization that would have no qualms accepting an apostate such as yourself, and are the only ones able to protect one from the Circle. Your message to me only confirms your affiliation with them."

"And the Calling? What led you to that conclusion?" Aaron asked, his voice sounding as if he were on the verge of panic.

"The entire organization of the Wardens has vanished, and now we know they might be involved in the Breach, going by that vision. Whether it was done by the Wardens themselves or something else, for them to disappear all _at once_ requires planning. _Discipline."_ Leliana gestured up and down at Aaron. "And yet, here you are. If you were indeed a Warden, the only explanation for why you hadn't disappeared would be that you are an exile or a deserter. The single most likely reason for any Warden to leave the Order is the Calling, which you all must eventually undertake. It would also explain why you don't show your face—you either don't want to be recognized as an outcast, or the corruption is already showing, or both."

Aaron had gone completely still. Leliana took that to mean she had scared him.

 _Good._

"...I _severely_ underestimated you." Aaron said after a long pause, sounding half-apologetic and half-awed. "Your inductive reasoning capability is astounding. I would _never_ have expected someone to come so close to the truth based on such little evidence. I had thought that if I shared nothing about myself, people would simply make their own assumptions, and only see what they wanted to. It's a phenomenon called confirmation bias. I believed it would protect me in this instance, but... Clearly, the flaw in that plan was anyone who knew a great deal about the Grey Wardens."

"I'm not interested in your flattery, Aaron." Leliana said harshly. "Tell me the truth. I gather my guess was not completely correct?"

Aaron glanced around, as if worried someone was watching. "Yes. But before I say more, you should know that I hold the Order and the Warden-Commander in the highest regard. The similarity of my alias to Aedan's name is no coincidence."

Leliana's eyebrows could not have shot up any higher at that.

"It is only because _he_ trusted you that I am here telling you this," Aaron continued, his rasping voice dropping to a low whisper. "Tell me, Sister Leliana—what do you know of the Warden-Commander's _'allies'_ during his war, a decade ago, in the Arling of Amaranthine?"

The realization hit Leliana with all the icy violence of an avalanche, and she gasped. Her reaction went against everything she had been taught in the Game, but this was simply _too much,_ and the shock went straight to her most primal instincts. The implications burst forth like a dam breaking, the connections forming faster than she could react to them.

The old wound of Aedan's missives, which at first she had disbelieved.

The vicious arguments over a decision that she had believed to be utterly indefensible.

The heart-rending sense of betrayal she had felt towards the one she had once trusted above all others.

The sleepless nights wondering what new horrors would be unleashed from the dead, lightless realms beneath the world.

It all locked together in an inexorable chain of logic that led to only one awful conclusion, an epiphany that Leliana tried to deny even as she realized it explained everything.

 _Aaron isn't a Grey Warden. He's the **inverse** of a Grey Warden. _

_'Aaron' is an Awakened darkspawn._

Leliana's hidden dagger was in her palm in half a second.

The thing calling itself Aaron didn't so much as flinch.

Leliana's grip on her dagger tightened, her heart pounding. "You—you're one of _them,_ aren't you? The darkspawn that can talk."

Black slits stared back at her. "I... was once called the Watcher. The blood that Warden Utha gave me severed my mind from the rest of the darkspawn. I cannot hear the Song of the Old Gods. I am free to make my own choices... just as you are."

She ought to have stabbed it, right then, before it could prepare a magical attack or try to strike her—yet fear, hopelessness, and sheer confusion caused her to hesitate, just long enough to realize that win or lose, she had no good options. They still _needed_ the mark.

"You are quite obviously an intelligent person." the darkspawn said, its tone frank. Mysteriously, it had dropped its slow manner of speech and was now talking at a normal rate, though the odd accent remained. "We both know that the Blight must be destroyed, along with all of my unenlightened brethren, so I'm not going to call you a bigot or say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Under the circumstances, your suspicion of me is completely justified."

Leliana was utterly baffled. The fact that a _darkspawn_ was _talking_ to her and not attacking was bizarre enough, but it actually seemed to be trying to convince her it was a traitor to its own kind.

"I'm not about to believe that you're on my side just because you tell me so." Leliana said, raising the dagger closer to its neck.

The darkspawn slowly lifted its hands up to its helmet. "Then allow me to provide further evidence of my good intentions."

Leliana kept her grip tight on the dagger, wary of some kind of trick. The creature gently removed its helm, revealing only a black cowl that hid his features. It placed the helm under one arm, and with the other, removed the cowl.

Chills raced down Leliana's entire body.

While ghouls resembled corpses succumbing to rot, and most common darkspawn were thin, skeletal creatures, Leliana had noticed that the leaders of packs of darkspawn were bigger, more _whole_ , like the Blight was nearly finished supplanting every part that had once been human. This darkspawn, the Watcher, looked like the Blight had completed its twisted design. He actually _resembled_ a Grey Warden in the advanced stages of the Calling.

The creature was so close to human, yet so very _wrong_. His skin was thick, like scar tissue, and deathly pale. Black veins stood out against the white like ink bleeding through paper, showing the unspeakable, virulent _infection_ that saturated his entire being. Unlike many darkspawn, he was whole enough to have lips, ears, and a nose, though these too were marred. His patchy, straight black hair reached nearly to his shoulders and was slicked back, exposing a hairline made jagged by scar tissue. Though this all made him look much more human than most darkspawn, there was nothing human at all about the black plates of chitin that covered the sides and back of his thick neck, and which continued down unseen.

But the most unsettling part were his _eyes,_ standing out amidst tattoos that resembled smudged tears of black blood. They were large, the irises crimson, the scleras shot through with so many black veins that they looked gray, and the pupils were milky and clouded over. They looked for all the world like the sightless eyes of a plagued corpse—yet those eyes intently studied Leliana, alive, alert, and filled with terrifying intelligence.

"Observe," the Watcher said, exposing teeth that were a mockery of a human's, all in the same places, but gray and sharpened to points.

The Watcher pressed the knifelike armored sheath covering his index finger into the thick skin of his cheek, narrowing his cloudy eyes slightly as he punctured his own skin. Thick, sludgy black blood welled up and trickled down his face alongside the tattoos, and before Leliana's eyes, the tiny wound closed. The lone globule of inky blood dripped down the Watcher's chin and splattered onto his chestplate. With a tiny hiss, the blood boiled so violently that it looked like it was desperately trying to fling itself away from the metal. Then, the armor seemed to faintly glow with blue-silver light, and the blood vanished, leaving only a wisp of greasy, acrid smoke to indicate it was ever there.

"Silverite enchantments," Leliana said, recognizing the familiar light.

The Watcher smiled slightly. "Correct. You truly are the most perceptive human I've met—barring the Warden-Commander, of course."

"What was this meant to prove?" Leliana asked. She was so deeply disturbed by the thing's alien, unnatural intelligence that it was all she could do to retain her composure, much less try to decipher its meaning.

The Watcher's expression became serious. "I could easily have conducted my business with the people of the Surface without these protections, tainting everything I touched. The Blight sickness is too slow and too subtle to be traced back to me, unless I were to deliberately advance it. Instead, I spent _months_ searching for and assembling this set of silverite armor, and these runes. This armor protects your kind from my disease, but it prevents me from using my Blight magic at all, and is painful for me to so much as touch with my bare skin. It confers no benefit to me, and essentially cripples me in many respects. Yet I—"

The Watcher's head suddenly darted to the side, nearly causing Leliana to plunge her dagger into his neck in panic. "Someone is coming."

Leliana strained to listen, and she could just barely hear raised voices echoing down from the stone stairway.

The Watcher quickly replaced its cowl and jammed his helm back onto his head.

"Listen," he hissed. "I don't have _time_ to prove my moral character to you, and you have a choice to make _right now_. Stall for the opportunity to make a better decision, or act rashly and lose your chance. I will _not_ remain here if you expose me. You know what the Warden-Commander—what _Aedan_ would do in this situation. I can only hope you have as much sense as he."

The voices were growing louder. Leliana recognized them as belonging to Cassandra and Chancellor Roderick. She had but moments to make the most important decision she had ever been forced to make.

Leliana had never felt more judged in her entire life. Not when speaking to the Guardian of the Gauntlet, nor even when confronting Marjolaine. It was as if the eyes of everyone she had ever known were watching her, disgusted by what they saw. She felt filthy just for considering working with one of these creatures, as Aedan had done. If she did the same, it would make her the worst sort of hypocrite. She would be betraying all those that fought with her against the Blight, not to mention all the darkspawn's victims, all the women that they brutalized, all the men that they had butchered and devoured... She _still_ had nightmares about what had become of Laryn and Hespith.

Either way she chose, she felt like she would come to terribly regret the decision.

Leliana lowered the dagger. The action felt hollow and pointless—something in the hurlock's bearing told her he had been totally unconcerned with the dagger from the beginning—but it was a crushing surrender nonetheless. Leliana swallowed her shame, and nodded once to the foul creature.

"I will tell no one of this," she said quietly.

 _And so I go down the road of darkness._

Somehow, Leliana had always known she would betray everything she once stood for. After all, she had never been the good person she pretended to be.

* * *

Aaron had been expecting the distrust. How many times had he played out this very conversation in his imagination? It had been his obsession for _weeks_. He knew it was only natural for her to hate him, but this was one of the _Warden-Commander's_ allies. The way she had looked at him, the fear and disgust, it _hurt_. In a way, it was the first time he had ever been judged for being what he was—the dwarves in the old tomes and the Memories Aaron had studied certainly offered him no judgement, beyond the condemnation of deafening silence in their dead thaigs.

 _Do I simply lack whatever quality the Warden-Commander saw in the Architect and the Messenger? Or is he the only human that would work willingly with my kind?_

Aaron knew it was not rational to feel ashamed for being what he was. It was not his fault for being born, and he had certainly not consented to be cut off from the Song. Yet he felt guilty and ashamed regardless. Emotions didn't care about logic, it seemed. Aaron watched Sister Leliana, saw the cold hatred in her eyes.

 _I will have to leave after all..._

Aaron watched in raw shock as the human nodded and lowered her weapon. After she had reacted so poorly, he hadn't actually expected to be able to salvage the situation.

No sooner did he open his mouth to thank Leliana than a furious man in the red-and-white robes of the Chantry reached the bottom of the stairs, followed shortly by Seeker Cassandra and a pair of armored templars.

"There he is! Arrest the fugitive immediately!" the robed man said, pointing at Aaron. "I want him brought to Val Royeaux to face execution!"

"Wait, wait, _wait!_ Is this even _legal?!_ Don't I get a trial?!" Aaron stammered, his eyes darting between the two templars.

Seeker Cassandra raised her arms to block the two templars from advancing. _"Disregard_ that order, and leave us," she said authoritatively, directing a venomous glare at the robed man.

The two templars exchanged a look. The man on the left spoke up. "Er, Seeker, the apostate—"

"— _Is going nowhere_. Now leave, while you still have your teeth." Cassandra said, utterly unwavering.

The two templars hurriedly saluted Cassandra, then tromped back up the stairs. Aaron thought it would have been comical, had it not been his own head at stake.

"Why are you _really_ here, Roderick?" Sister Leliana asked coolly.

"I had to see if _someone_ was in charge around here!" the man named Roderick thundered. "I find myself shut out and countermanded at every turn! And now the fugitive is roaming freely, hailed as a hero?! I've never _seen_ such incompetence!"

Aaron felt a twinge of dread. This man was clearly some sort of leader. He could prove to be a powerful enemy, if provoked.

"Ser," Aaron said, forcing his voice to be calm, "I believe you may not be entirely informed. There was—"

"Indeed, I _haven't_ been informed! Even in this chaos, this insubordination is inexcusable, Seeker!" Roderick said, his doughy face turning red.

Cassandra jabbed a finger at Roderick's chest. "I don't report to you! If you think you can seize power in the wake of the Divine's death—"

"Enough!" Leliana said sharply, stepping between the two. "Chancellor Roderick, it is just as well that you are here. Let us resolve the issue of authority, here and now. Cassandra, it's time. Do you have it?"

Cassandra's eyes widened. "I... yes, I grabbed it just in case. But the Knight— _Aaron_ —is he...?"

"I know who he is, and I'm handling it. He will work with us to stop the Breach, as he says." Leliana said, giving Aaron an indecipherable look. He nodded back.

Roderick regarded the two women with skepticism. "What is this?"

Cassandra reached into the heavy knapsack at her hip and withdrew a thick tome with a metal eye symbol on the cover. Roderick blanched as his eyes fell to the symbol.

"You know what this is, Chancellor." Cassandra said, then spared a glance at Aaron. "This is a writ from Divine Justinia, granting us the authority to _act_. _"_

Aaron watched, fascinated, as Cassandra marched forward resolutely, forcing Roderick back with sheer force of personality.

"As of this moment, I declare the Inquisition reborn." Cassandra declared, her voice ringing powerfully in the stone room. "Together, we will _close_ the Breach, _find_ those responsible, and restore order— _with_ or _without_ your approval."

 _The Inquisition? What is this Inquisition?_ Aaron wondered, marveling at his own conceit. Had he really thought that studying dwarven philosophy and culture in the Deep Roads would prepare him for this madness? He had absolutely no idea what was happening, though it certainly _felt_ momentous. Though the uncertainty of even being _near_ these humans was still a terrifying prospect, Aaron somehow felt more determined to work with them to set things right. He supposed that made sense, how could someone witness such a passionate display and not be moved?

"Unacceptable," Roderick snarled. "Using Justinia's name to raise up this, this _maleficar_ as the _Knight of Andraste?_ The very one who created the Breach in the first place!? The Chantry will not stand for it! _I_ will not stand for it! This criminal will face justice!"

Aaron regarded Roderick with stunned incredulity. _"What?_ That's madness! And if you really believed I created the Breach, why would you be antagonizing me? I never even claimed that—"

"You see?! He's _threatening_ me!" Roderick accused.

"I have done no such thing!" Aaron seethed. "Besides, it makes _no sense_ that you would want to execute the only one that can seal rifts!"

"According to _you!"_ Roderick countered. "The Breach is still in the sky, how terribly _convenient_ for your little charade! For all we know, you _intended_ it that way!"

"But how could you _know_ that?" Aaron demanded, stepping forward. "You weren't even there! The visions that the Fade showed us _clearly_ —"

"What a _coincidence_ that the Fade, the realm of _lies_ from whence you came, would just _happen_ to show you something that exonerates you! Now, who do we know that can manipulate the Fade, again? Oh, yes, I believe they're called _mages?"_ Roderick said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

"But—that—" Aaron sputtered. His fists were clenched and shaking with anger, and his voice was steadily rising. His thoughts were becoming less coherent, the lost threads of his arguments and objections utterly scattered by Roderick's interruptions.

 _Debate isn't supposed to be like this! Why, why can't I think clearly? How can he be allowed to be so illogical?! How can he not see?!_ Aaron inwardly raged.

"We considered the possibility of… tampering, and dismissed it." Cassandra said, making to intervene. Leliana put her hand on Cassandra's shoulder, shaking her head.

"So the fact that he is the sole survivor, cast out of the Fade, bearing the same magic used to create the rifts—just a coincidence? Don't insult me." Roderick scoffed.

 _"No one_ is claiming it was a coincidence! For all we know, there is a single reason those circumstances are all correlated!" Aaron said defensively.

"So you confess that you are the one responsible!" Roderick said triumphantly.

Aaron jerked back as though Roderick had slapped him. The sheer, twisted mendacity of the statement was stunning.

 _"WHAT_ is _WRONG_ with you!?" Aaron exploded. "Leaping to conclusions based on _nothing_ isn't just pointless, it's _irresponsible!_ If I'm innocent, the real culprits will not stand idle just because you've burned me in effigy! How does it—"

The realization that Chancellor Roderick was _deliberately provoking him_ hit Aaron like a hammer. His rage guttered and went out like a candle, replaced by confusion and fear. He had no instincts, no experience in avoiding a trap such as this. As such, he had no idea how to respond, other than to voice his amazement aloud.

"You… you _don't_ really believe that, you _can't_ believe that, it's just not logical—but you want me to get angry, make a mistake. You would endanger _your own life_ just to see me lose my temper, so that I would be vilified, eliminated?"

Roderick's soft face contorted with rage. _"Absolutely._ You are a danger to the Chantry—to all of us! Perhaps moreso than the Breach!"

Aaron shook his head, feeling drained and shaky as the anger left him. "How could I, a single individual, _possibly_ qualify as a greater threat than the Breach, which threatens this entire _realm?"_

"It isn't what you _are,_ it's what you will _become!"_ Roderick said vehemently. "When the Imperial Chantry split off, it caused Exalted Marches, _incalculable_ death and suffering! Maker only knows how much, for the hostilities are still very much active! If you are to become recognized as the Knight of Andraste, what's to stop you from becoming the leader of a cult, even posthumously?! We may be looking at the formation of yet another sect, and yet more war, at a time when we can hardly afford it! Your _divisiveness_ could be the factor that makes Thedas unable to respond to the Breach!"

Aaron was struck speechless. After all the fallacies and baseless accusations, this was a very sound and persuasive argument, one he didn't have an answer for.

"Chancellor," Aaron said finally, "I will concede that disunity could be as deadly as the Breach, but I don't see how executing the only one able to close the rifts could possibly _help._ If I were to publicly denounce all the rumors of my connection to Andraste before the Chantry and Thedas, do you think that would suffice?"

"You can't be serious!" Cassandra exclaimed. Leliana merely narrowed her eyes, her scowl deepening.

Roderick glowered up at Aaron. "It's too late. There is nothing you can do at this point. The Chantry can't be seen cooperating with you, or this new Inquisition, until the election of a new Divine."

"And how long would that take, Chancellor? Are we to simply let more people die and nations crumble in the interim?" Cassandra said sharply. "Oh, by all means, let us dither and argue over politics while the world burns to ashes around us, and demons tear apart what remains!"

"We cannot afford to pursue this recklessly," Roderick snapped back. "Your Inquisition lacks both sanction and legitimacy. It cannot _possibly_ —"

With a sudden spark of understanding, Aaron could see that this argument was not constructive. No one would change their minds, they would only entrench and argue their point, waiting for the others to relent—which they would never do. Aaron desperately prodded his mind to think of a solution, or at least remember the scientific works he had read regarding the psychology of persuasion. It seemed muddled in his recollection, but he at least remembered that he needed to defuse the emotions, and seek common ground somehow.

Aaron stepped forward, holding his arms out. "Excuse me, Chancellor, but I think some perspective is in order. I'm certain everyone here wants an end to this crisis. This does _not_ have to be a case where people divide into factions. We have an _extremely obvious_ external problem to face, and an _unambiguously evil_ enemy in common. If we can't work together to address this threat, it may well doom us all. And if that happened, we would _deserve_ it. So why are we pretending like we even have the _luxury_ not to cooperate?"

"Aaron is correct," Cassandra said. "Chancellor, the fact remains that Aaron holds the only way to seal the rifts, and possibly end this madness. You can accept this and help, or you can pretend this isn't happening and do nothing. Either way, you _will not_ prevent the Inquisition from doing what is necessary to save everyone. Justinia gave her life for this cause, and so shall I, if the Maker wills it."

Chancellor Roderick stared at Cassandra, his upper lip twitching, and with a whip of robes, stormed out of the room.

Cassandra turned to Leliana. "Why did you stop me? What was the point of letting those two get into a shouting match?" she demanded.

Leliana gave Aaron a calculating look. "I needed to see how he would react."

Aaron didn't appreciate being tested in such a manner, but at least he hadn't lost his temper completely. Given how aggravating Roderick was being, he thought he deserved just a little bit of credit from her.

"I don't think Roderick would have seen reason regardless," Cassandra conceded, "But that may have just made things worse for us."

Leliana gave a single humorless chuckle, causing Cassandra to raise an eyebrow at her. "Are you feeling all right?"

Aaron quickly decided he did _not_ want this line of inquiry to continue. "Excuse me," he said, sliding past the two women. "I'm going to try to make things right between Roderick and I."

Cassandra snorted. "Good luck with that. The man is stubborn as a mule."

"He isn't the only one that can be stubborn," Aaron said, with one last glance at Leliana. She actually looked thoughtful for a moment, before her cynical mask reasserted itself.

 _Well,_ Aaron thought, _it's a start._

* * *

Hopelessness.

For two days, that was what had greeted Chancellor Roderick wherever he turned. He could not force himself to look upon the Breach for too long, such was the pain he felt. Instead, he took in the pale faces of soldiers that had given up hope, the grieving sobs wracking their bodies, the shine of tears, the stuttering, hollow recitations of the Chant of Light. That terrible green light seemed to sap the very life from all of them. It was all he could do to keep his own composure, those first two terrible days.

Roderick had been amazed when he saw the long tendril of light erupt and then vanish, leaving only the vortex in the clouds behind. It had given him _hope_ again.

Then, the Left Hand of the Divine had finally deigned to tell him how exactly that 'miracle' had come about.

And so Roderick's hope had turned to horror.

The worst part was that he could understand how the disaster had happened, and it wasn't anything in his power to prevent. Roderick always had possessed an intuitive grasp of people, which was how he had become the Chancellor to Her Perfection in the first place. Here, he could see the soldiers and civilians, see their suffering, and understood all too well their reflexive impulse to grasp at whatever shred of hope was offered to them. Just as a drowning man would cling to a rope, so too would these men and women take for their savior a fugitive from justice, a maleficar, by inventing the absurd lie that he was a knight sent to them by Andraste.

Roderick didn't even blame them, if for no other reason than the fact that decades of politics had taught Roderick that the masses were not competent enough to bear responsibility for anything of consequence. But for the Right and Left Hands to elevate that lie by calling for an Inquisition, to cynically use the maleficar as their primary symbol and tool… it was unforgivable, and disastrous. Roderick's gambit had failed, now he had to leave to regroup and come up with another plan, the only thing left to do was to contain this catastrophe…

Roderick heard the doors of the chantry opening behind him, followed by approaching footsteps.

It was the usurper himself, following Roderick out into the snowy path in front of the chantry.

"Enough!" Roderick shouted at the empty air, his voice breaking. "If you people would just stop _hounding_ me, I'd be able to…"

Roderick took a few more steps, then stopped. No, he would not run from this. He turned to face Aaron.

Roderick Asignon was a short in stature, and had never been athletic, not even in his youth. Yet he stood, not quite strong, but unwavering, as the giant, armored maleficar walked over to him, looming over him without even trying. The maleficar's ability to effortlessly destroy Roderick failed to move him. Roderick had not once been cowed by mere bullies or the threat of violence in his life, and he would not be now.

"Chancellor Roderick," the low, rough voice intoned. "I apologize for the way I acted earlier. Please. I… don't want to be your enemy. I only want to help however I can. I believe you do, too."

Roderick's retort died in his throat. There was truth, there, his trained intuition was telling him. Roderick coughed thrice and tried to order his thoughts.

"…This isn't something you can help, even if you genuinely wanted to," Roderick said with a sigh. In that moment, he just couldn't bring himself to be anything other than completely candid. "That may seem unfair to you, and perhaps it is. But necessity dictates that you be dealt with, and quickly, before you become a problem."

There was a long silence, but as it stretched it was as if the tension was slowly ratcheting down between them.

"Why do you think I am guilty of this?" Aaron finally asked, his voice now soft and sibilant. "Why do so many people here treat me as if I am either good or evil? As if those are the only two things I can be? I am only… only a person. I don't even believe that people _can_ be perfectly good or evil. So why? Why can't you just see me as a person?"

Roderick knew the true answer, that he didn't believe Aaron guilty. But he also knew that this was the answer he must never speak aloud, just as he knew the false answer he must give, but he found it difficult to say. Aaron was in genuine pain, he could hear it in that voice and see it in those shoulders, and he hadn't expected to be facing such vulnerability instead of a show of intimidation.

Truly, Roderick's honed empathy was a double-edged sword at times.

Roderick made a snap decision to explain his viewpoint instead of simply lying—if for no other reason than to assuage his own conscience in preparation for what must be done.

"You are more than just a person for the same reason we regard the Divine as the embodiment of perfection," Roderick said, realizing just a second too late what it was that he just said, and who he had said it to. He quickly backtracked. "What I mean is, it has nothing to do with _you,_ it is about what you _symbolize_ to people. The Divine is a mortal human, of course, but the _symbol_ she embodies is infallible, _must be_ infallible to the people, just as you must be either a savior or a villain to them, in this darkest time. The complications and uncertainty of the truth would be too much to accept… It doesn't matter what I believe you've done."

"Utilitarian ethics? From a theologian?" Aaron muttered disbelievingly. "I never expected to be seen as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good… But I have _absolutely_ no intention to form a cult. That must count for something, surely?"

"Your intentions aren't important! They, the people, will look to an _active_ force to guide them, now, not the decapitated Chantry! Divine Beatrix, she… I think we had all had become accustomed to a Divine who was unable to act. A mere figurehead. That is why... Divine Justinia... she came as such a shock to me, to everyone…"

Even mentioning Justinia sent a stabbing pain to Roderick's heart. He felt her loss more keenly than the loss of a limb. Though he would never admit this to anyone save the absent Maker, Roderick had hated Justinia at first. Before Justinia, he had unofficially ruled the Chantry in Beatrix's name as she slipped further and further into her dotage. When Justinia had seized that power from him, it had felt like he was losing everything. He didn't understand until much later why she had kept him after taking Beatrix's place, even though she surely knew he was bitter. Justinia had gambled that she could win Roderick over and use his talents, and in that, she had succeeded.

Justinia had been an endless font of frustration for Roderick, making his life very difficult indeed, for she acted in defiance of all secular politics and the delicate internecine struggles within the Chantry. And yet, even as she exercised her will in a way that Roderick thought was too rash, she had eventually won his true admiration and loyalty. Not simply because she was an intelligent and worthy leader, always one step ahead of Roderick, but because she was quite possibly the greatest soul to walk Thedas since Andraste herself. She was singularly devout, brave, compassionate, shrewd, and utterly unyielding—the world could not help but quake before her power, and Roderick stood in awe of her machinations even as he was dismayed by their consequences.

And now this _unworthy_ heathen was threatening to take her place, intentionally or not… Roderick could not help but oppose that with every fiber of his being. If that meant stepping back into his lapsed role of being the unofficial leader of the Chantry, then so be it. He would not be glad to do it, but this time, he would do it for Justinia and the Chantry, not simply for himself.

The other man did not speak as the silence between them stretched. With an embarrassed start, Roderick realized that he had been crying. He turned his head from the other man's view, to hide his shame.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save them," Aaron said, very quietly. "I can only infer from the vision—I don't actually remember—but I think I tried to stop this. To save the Divine."

"You _failed,"_ Roderick said, his voice cracking. It wasn't an accusation, just an observation of the injustice of the world, that this _apostate_ should live, while all the others had perished.

Roderick dried his eyes, and looked back at Aaron. "It is done, and there is no changing it now… We need to look to the future. And I don't see how that future can include you."

"Quite frankly, Chancellor, I don't think any of us have a choice in the matter. If we wish to stop the demons, we need to either use the mark on my hand, or find some other way to seal rifts. Until we can explore those other options thoroughly, can we at least agree to a truce?" Aaron asked, making an open gesture with his hands.

Roderick didn't respond. Instead, he searched Aaron's body language, tried to peer past the dark fabric behind the slits in his helmet.

"Who _are_ you?" said Roderick, the words heavy with emotion.

You could barely see Aaron's flinch. "…That's not important right now. Can it not simply suffice that I am here, and I wish to help? Truly, in light of all we face, is that not enough?"

"No," Roderick shook his head. "No, it isn't."

Roderick turned and walked away, trying desperately to escape the feelings of guilt pressing in on him.

 _Maker forgive me for what must be done._

* * *

 **A/N:** Congratulations to those new readers that guessed Aaron's identity correctly, and to reviewer ogmios86! At some point later in the story, I will add some bonus content as a prize, per their request. For all others, I will be offering another bonus for anyone who manages to figure out how Aaron is seemingly able to appear and disappear from otherwise inaccessible places. Good luck!

For those who have not played Awakening or may have forgotten some of the details, the Awakened darkspawn are darkspawn that have been given a modified version of the Grey Wardens' Joining ritual by one of the Magisters Sidereal, the Architect, which freed them from the compulsion of the Old Gods. A human mage broodmother, known only as the Mother, led a rebellion against the Architect. The Watcher, AKA Aaron, possesses the facial tattoos of the Mother's faction, and in terms of physical appearance he is pretty much a dead ringer for her. This is not a coincidence.

Thanks for reading, following, and reviewing!


	8. Chapter 8

One Step Ahead Chapter 8

* * *

Cassandra hated waiting.

Apparently, declaring an Inquisition was a lot more involved than simply shoving a book in the Grand Chancellor's face. It had taken _two entire days_ of frantic activity just to send out the appropriate letters and announcements, organize the troops, and establish the new command structure. Now things were just barely starting to return to a semblance of order, a week after the destruction of the Conclave.

Cassandra was amazed at how normal she started to feel after only a few days. The task they faced was no less daunting, the events that had occurred were no less horrible, but in declaring the Inquisition, Cassandra felt like she had rediscovered her purpose. Though the pace was frustrating, the simple fact that they were doing _something_ instead of running around like headless chickens or reeling in shock helped enormously.

The news slowly coming in from around the world was about as depressing as Cassandra had come to expect. Orlais was in shambles, the Imperium's false Chantry wasn't even trying to contain its glee, and Ferelden was being torn apart by mages and templars. Maker only knew what was happening further away.

One thing kept nagging at her thoughts, however, and that was Leliana's refusal to discuss Aaron's situation with anyone. Josephine had been completely beside herself in frustration at Leliana, but Cassandra could understand the necessity. Even so, that even someone as… _tolerant_ as Leliana would totally refuse to even hint at Aaron's background was more than a little disconcerting, but what was more alarming was Leliana's sudden shift in demeanor. Ever since her discussion with Aaron, she had become dark, brooding, and short-tempered. The Breach had dashed Leliana's hopes, like everyone else, but even that hadn't made her drop her mask like this. Seeing that pressing her for information would be unwise, Cassandra managed to keep her concerns and curiosity about Aaron to herself.

Cassandra had a lot to think about on the sparring grounds that morning.

* * *

Cassandra was busy venting her frustrations onto a heavily notched training dummy, for lack of anything else to do while the others organized their branches of the Inquisition. Her purpose was as a warrior and investigator, not a bureaucrat, so she had been left with little to do. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Varric approaching. He was dressed in a loud red-and-gold outfit instead of leathers, and wasn't carrying Bianca, therefore he must have come to the training grounds just to bother her.

Wonderful.

Cassandra gave a little grunt of annoyance and studiously ignored him, focusing on chopping the dummy to pieces while imagining it was a particular mouthy dwarf.

"So this is your happy place," Varric drawled, raising his voice to compete with the din of sparring soldiers.

Cassandra thrust her sword deep into the frozen ground and crossed her arms. "What do you want, dwarf?"

Varric put his hands over his heart, adopting a hurt expression. "You wound me, Seeker. Can't a dwarf just stop by to say hello?"

"Hello." Cassandra said flatly. "I trust your business is now concluded?"

Varric cleared his throat. "Uh, heh, you caught me. I've actually been keeping my ear to the ground, you see, and there have been certain… misgivings."

"Oh?" Cassandra asked, resting her hands on her hips. "And what might those be?"

"Well, the rumor mill has been pretty wild, no surprises there, but lately people have really started to stick to one thing in particular—Aaron's absence. Some think the Inquisition's keeping him under lock and key. Others think he died, or went back to the Fade. And a whole lot of people have it in their heads that he's got a terrible secret he's trying to hide. Our fluffy friend is very mysterious, after all." said Varric.

Cassandra took a deep breath and sighed. "And what do _you_ think?"

"Oh, he's hiding something unspeakably horrible, there's no doubt about that," Varric said, waving dismissively.

"And that unspeakably horrible _something_ doesn't concern you at all?" Cassandra asked, raising an eyebrow. Varric's cavalier attitude made no sense to her at times. It wasn't like he was ignorant of the danger of trusting mages. He had _countless_ experiences with mages keeping dark secrets that went horribly wrong, yet he acted blasé about things that he _knew_ could easily kill him.

"Oh, we're all hiding something unspeakably horrible, aren't we?" Varric said with a knowing chuckle. "But that's not the point. Aaron's the _Knight of Andraste_ now, but you're letting that advantage lapse. You have him, so use him."

"But how in the world are we supposed to rely on him, when no one other—" Cassandra's heart skipped a beat. She had nearly said that _no one other than Leliana_ knew of Aaron's past, but Leliana had informed her in no uncertain terms that her knowledge was to remain secret. "—other than Aaron himself knows the first thing _about_ him?"

Varric's expression turned serious. "You're going about this the wrong way, Seeker. Think of it from _his_ perspective. He has no reason to confide in you, not when you treat him with hostility and suspicion. If you really wanted to know what his deal is, just get him to trust you, and he'll open up eventually. It's inevitable."

Cassandra blinked in surprise. She had not expected such a display of conviction from Varric. If it weren't for Varric's apparently sincere concern, she might have felt inclined to warn Aaron to watch for any signs of Varric trying to ingratiate himself.

 _He might just be right. Perhaps Varric is simply better at reading people than I am.  
_

"How am I supposed to get him to trust me?" Cassandra asked, genuinely curious.

"Maybe by not keeping him _locked away in the dungeon?"_ Varric said pointedly.

Cassandra frowned. So even Varric believed they had locked Aaron away?

"We've not detained him in any way, nor _could_ we, given his predilection for disappearing." Cassandra said grudgingly. "He has simply preferred to stay in the dungeon."

Varric blinked a few times in surprise. "Really? That's just as telling. Nobody _prefers_ to stay in a dungeon, Seeker. He'd probably rather be _anywhere_ but in the public eye. Not that I blame him, but that's got to change, and quickly."

"That's… you're probably correct about that." Cassandra conceded. "We _were_ planning to have a public ceremony with all the Divine's advisors to unveil the Inquisition flag over the chantry at noon…"

That gave Cassandra an idea.

"Since you seem so eager to help, Varric, _you_ can be our liaison to Aaron," she said with a wicked smirk, savoring his sudden look of indignation. "You are the only person here that he seems to like, though only the Maker knows why, so go and fetch him from his little hole. Use your silver tongue to convince him, or _drag_ him out, if necessary. I don't care, just get it done. I won't have this Inquisition, the Divine's Inquisition, begin under a pall of suspicion."

Varric looked as if he was about to refuse, then sighed. "Oh, fine. Have it your way, Seeker."

Cassandra smirked.

"But if I befriend him and find out any juicy details, you'll be the last to know!" Varric taunted, departing with a little wave. Then, in a lower undertone, he added, "Unlike you, I'm very good at making friends."

Before he could escape from that remark, Cassandra walloped him in the back of the head with a snowball.

* * *

Varric felt jumpy and wished he was carrying Bianca as he descended into the shadowy dungeon. Whatever else was going on with him, there was something definitely _off_ about Aaron. It wasn't anything to do with his magic, or his creepy voice, or his hidden appearance. It was the _other_ things, the subtle things, that gnawed at Varric. As a writer, he noticed that the way Aaron worded things was oddly formal and detached. As a fighter experienced in reading people, Varric had also noticed that the way Aaron moved was subtly _wrong._ He was somehow too fluid and too quick at the same time. And when he _wasn't_ moving, he stood completely motionless, without so much as a fidget or a twitch. It was _insectile,_ for lack of a better description, like he was a giant hooded mantis. Varric had a sneaking suspicion that Aaron wasn't a qunari or tal-vashoth like he'd originally thought, but rather something… _else_. He had no idea _what,_ but his gut instinct was that it was Fade-related somehow.

At any rate, Aaron didn't seem like the kind of person you wanted to startle, so Varric made a conscious effort to suppress his silent habits of moving, tromping loudly down the stairs.

He spotted Aaron sitting at the end of the dungeon, hunched over a poor, suffering old table that seemed to sag under the weight of the stacks of books piled on top and the massive armored man leaning on it.

"If you'll please leave me to my work, I would appreciate it," Aaron said with an uncharacteristically hard tone to his voice, not bothering to look away from the one open book on the table.

"Can it wait?" Varric asked. "I'd like to talk with you about something."

Aaron flinched hard, sending a precarious stack of books crashing to the grimy floor.

"Oh!" Aaron quickly stood, and the table and chair groaned in relief. He crossed his forearms over his chest, bowing slightly. "Forgive me, _salroka_. What can I do for you?"

 _What's with this deferential reaction?_ Varric wondered.

"I wanted to check up on you. Sorry." Varric said, leaning down to help pick up the fallen books. It was an eclectic collection, containing everything from _A Botanical Field Guide of Southern Thedas_ to _Qun, Gurns and Steel_. "I, uh, see you've been reading."

"That is correct," Aaron said, carefully taking _In Pursuit of Knowledge: Travels of a Chantry Scholar_ from Varric and closing it, taking great care not to scratch the pages with his spiky, clawlike gauntlets. The contrast between his intimidating armor and the gentle surety of his movements was jarring.

"Is something bothering you? You seemed angry before." Varric asked.

Aaron looked away for a moment before answering. "I was reading the history of the last thousand years, since the Blights began. The state of the Surface world is… far more bleak than I imagined. I… to be honest, I am starting to question whether it can be saved. I'm even starting to question what I learned from the Paragons."

Varric couldn't help but stare at Aaron incredulously. _Learned from the Paragons? What is he talking about? He said that as if they were still alive…_

Varric cleared his throat awkwardly. "Er, if you don't mind me asking, what did you learn from the Paragons, and how?"

Aaron's hand went to his chest. Somehow, the gesture seemed pained. "You may be _Kalna,_ a Surfacer, but you are still a dwarf... In case I die or should be exposed, I should probably tell _you,_ if no one else…" Aaron muttered, as if speaking to himself.

 _That… really doesn't sound good, whatever it means._

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" Varric suggested.

"Hm. How to put this... I mentioned before that I was a scholar, yes? That is what I told Seeker Cassandra and Sister Leliana. In truth, I am more of an autodidact. In my search for knowledge, I discovered something of great importance, and that is why I sought the Grey Wardens." Aaron paused, searching for words. "The beginning… I'm sorry, I cannot tell you the _whole_ truth about that, but I swear that what follows is no lie. It really began ten years ago, when I was between ten or fifteen years old, at my best guess. That was when my mother died."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I also lost my mother when I was young," Varric blurted in sheer reflex. "What I mean is… I understand what it's like for a parent not to be there."

"A comparison that would do your mother a disservice, I'm certain," Aaron said flatly. "Suffice to say, my mother was a lost cause, but she was all I had at the time. After she was killed, I hadn't an ally in the world. Thus, I sought to escape from those who would kill me as well, and descended far into the Deep Roads, where no one else could find me."

Varric _really_ didn't like where this story was going. Varric had learned far too well that things discovered down in the Deep Roads should _stay_ in the Deep Roads. He struggled to keep his breathing level and his expression controlled as memories of Bartrand and the Idol resurfaced. "How did you survive?"

"I found a thaig. It was sealed and accessible only to someone with my… particular talents. _Dunammar_ is its name." Aaron said, his voice heavy with an emotion that was difficult to identify. "Dunammar was once the seat of the Shaperate throughout the entire Dwarven Empire, lost during the First Blight. They were trapped, cut off on all sides, and… they chose to seal their thaig and die on their own terms rather than be killed by the darkspawn. There I found the Archive, the great ziggurat where the memories of great men and women were stored. Centuries of scholars, artists, heroes, philosophers, Paragons—the library was immense and diverse. Their experiences were all immortalized into the Memories, transferred into the living Stone itself by Lyrium. The Memories allow you to experience events in their lives as if you were _actually_ _there._ I… don't think I could have survived the isolation for so many years without the Memories to prevent me from going mad."

 _Well, shit. I guess that's how Aaron knows ancient dwarven phrases, and why he's so weird around other people,_ Varric realized. He still hadn't the slightest clue what Aaron was, but this explained a number of Aaron's oddities.

"So the reason you don't have any idea of what happened during the last thousand years is because… because you spent the last ten years stuck living inside this ancient library?" Varric said, having difficulty accepting the concept. It was hard to imagine something more depressing than an orphan growing up alone in a dark, quiet tomb, with only the memories of the dead to keep him company. Varric's voice of reason, which sounded just like Aveline, was telling him that someone in those circumstances really ought to have gone insane or died years ago. Either Aaron was lying, or he wasn't quite as sane as he believed. At least Memories were more mentally benign than Lyrium idols. Probably.

"I was never _trapped_ in Dunammar. I _wanted_ to be there," Aaron said with a strange, desperate fervor that gave Varric little reassurance as to Aaron's sanity.

"That place—I cannot adequately describe it. The Memories showed me new realms and ideas and feelings I never knew existed, never even _imagined_. You _cannot_ know what it is like to delve deep into the Memories, not until you have done it yourself. Those beautiful works, they are like doorways that take you back in time, to places filled with _vibrance_ and _life_. Dunammar's memories were all perfectly preserved… but… their hopes for the future, their struggles, their lives, it all came to naught in the end." Aaron said, his whole body shaking with emotion as he balled his hands into fists. Judging from his rough voice and ragged, irregular gasps of breath, he was probably crying behind that concealing helmet. "They are forgotten, like they never—like they never even _existed_. I never wanted to leave, but I couldn't just let Dunammar… _end_ like that."

Even after the calamity of the last few days, the emotional reaction came as a total shock to Varric. Aaron had remained calm and focused, even aloof, when he'd been dealing with the Breach, but now… It had been such a long time since Varric had truly _felt_ the loss of what his people once had, or _allowed_ himself to feel it. Seeing Aaron's unguarded reaction like this brought back that awful pang of loss, and he could feel his own eyes start to sting in empathy.

As he struggled to keep his composure, Varric finally recognized the emotion he was seeing in Aaron. It was the same feeling of terrible loss and regret that motivated Merrill and the other Dalish, the tragedy of lost history. Varric knew firsthand what those feelings could drive someone to do, how losing a culture could be felt as keenly as the loss of a relative. And if Aaron's strange, sad tale was true, this Archive was the only thing he had to cling to—unlike the Dalish, who at least had each other. It was no wonder that learning the Surface's history came as a demoralizing blow to him. Aaron had come to the Surface to save an extinct culture, only to become embroiled in the latest in a long line of catastrophes, and discover that the same extinctions had been happening on the Surface as well.

Varric stood silently, not looking at Aaron as he fought to get himself under control. Finally, Aaron's breath evened out, and Varric ventured to speak again.

"I don't understand, though… why did you originally want to go to the Grey Wardens with this? Why tell _me?_ Just because I'm a dwarf? I don't speak for any dwarves other than myself. Isn't this something the Legion of the Dead or the Assembly should handle?" Varric asked.

"No. I believed the Grey Wardens would be instrumental in helping to disseminate what I found in Dunammar. I had hoped they could even help reclaim the thaig, restore it to life once again like they did Kal'Hirol… it was naïve, I know, but I had no other choice. I knew _certain_ Wardens might have listened to me, but the Deshyrs of Orzammar and their so-called Shapers would have preferred Dunammar to stay buried for political reasons. Even if that weren't the case, they would not have suffered my presence." Aaron said bitterly. "Now, with the Wardens gone and having learned of the state of the Surface world, I am starting to believe that even were it shared, the wisdom of Dunammar will fall upon deaf ears."

The thing was, Aaron was probably right about how Orzammar would react to that news, and its messenger. Varric clamped down on his steadily rising anger at the tradition-bound Orzammar dwarves—an old habit at this point—and tried for diplomacy. "Okay, so maybe Orzammar might not greet this Archive with open arms, but the Surface isn't a lost cause. I know things seemed pretty bleak on the Surface, even before the Breach, but with what happened during the Fifth Blight and with the potential of this Inquisition, I think we've reached a turning point. The people behind it, the Divine and everyone else, they really are good people trying to make things better. You may not agree with their politics, but—"

"Don't misunderstand me," Aaron interrupted. "I know that not the _entirety_ of the Surface is lost. The Grey Wardens are an ideal example, but I've also read of Divine Justinia's reform policies. I know that the Inquisition's mission is ethical and just. Promoting the rights of the meager and oppressed, trying to rein in the excesses of the corrupt and powerful… it would be cliché, if only it weren't so sadly necessary."

That was certainly the first time Varric had heard it put _that_ way. Most people considered such ideals to be hopelessly naïve and unrealistic at best, or raving radicalism at worst. Was Aaron's—or Dunammar's—perspective really that different? Or had Orzammar really changed more than the traditionalists wanted to admit?

"So if you agree with them, then what's the problem?" Varric said, feeling a familiar sense of righteous zeal light up within him. "Even if it's far from certain we'll succeed, we need to try anyway. There are good people out there suffering, and we can't just stand by when we can help stop it."

"I know," Aaron said, his voice gone quiet and broken, his head and shoulders slumping. "I know all of that. But I'm… I am not the hero they think I am. I can never be the hero, the Paragon I _wish_ I could be. I can't even show my _face_ to them, Varric. Nor to you. If I tried to help, I would just end up condemning those who trusted me. Everything I touched would turn to ash."

Varric was so stunned by the hopelessness and despair in Aaron's voice that, for a few moments, he was at a loss for what to say.

"Then forget the past. It doesn't matter what you are now. _Become_ that hero." Varric said fervently. "Look, no one is _born_ a hero. I fought by the side of Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, and let me tell you, she wasn't a hero when I first laid eyes on her. She was just another refugee who killed things for money. People _become_ heroes by stepping up when it seems like no one else could or would. You were hardly a perfect hero when you sealed the Breach before. You were a shambling wreck and a fugitive maleficar! Pretty much everyone wanted your head on a stick! That didn't stop you then, so why give up now that people actually _like_ you? Trust me, Fluffy, I know potential when I see it. Whatever kind of resolve it is that pushes some people to get mixed up in crazy shit, _you've got it._ For better or worse."

Aaron straightened slightly. "You're right. Of course you're right… The Paragons would have said the same thing. The chances of success may be remote, but failure is _certain_ if I do not even try. There is only one path forward, and that won't change for me agonizing over it. How strange that I needed to hear you say it, when I knew it all along… Thank you, Varric, for helping me face the truth."

Varric smiled. If you asked Hawke or the Hero of Ferelden whether they had a choice, they probably would have said no, too. But they did make that choice, and they did do what they thought was right. People like that only see the choices between different actions, but most people choose to do nothing at all.

"Speaking of heroism, Cassandra thinks you're due for an appearance to reassure the masses that you're still alive. They could really use some encouragement, you know…" Varric said, letting the bait hang.

"I suppose I'll go, then. It isn't fair to deny false hope to these pilgrims, even if it feels like lying…" Aaron said with a sigh.

"I'll go with you," Varric said hastily. "Biggest lesson on how to be a hero: _you don't have to face this alone._ Hawke and the Hero of Ferelden would have gotten _nowhere_ by themselves, and you're no different. I know public appearances can be unnerving for some people, but you can let me handle most of the talking and whatnot. Or, better yet, just keep talking to me, and people won't try to bother you."

Aaron relaxed slightly. "Thank you. Truly. I… never expected to find such an ally."

Varric waved a hand. _"Ally?_ Please. We fought a _Pride demon_ together. That makes us friends, Fluffy."

A second too late, Varric realized the significance of what he'd just said. He had intended it to just be casual banter, but Aaron had probably never had a living friend in his entire life. There was no telling what Varric was getting into with a deeply troubled and quite possibly possessed apostate that was obsessed with dwarves and literally held the power to save or ruin the world.

Well, in for a copper, in for a crown.

* * *

Cassandra's eyes widened when she caught sight of Varric and Aaron emerging from the chantry. Aaron had cast back his hood and furred mantle again, exposing his gleaming blue-silver armor to the sunlight. Varric strutted along beside Aaron, half as tall and taking three steps for his every one, yet he still managed to look dignified and smug as he surveyed the small crowd that was gathering around the front of the chantry, before lighting his gaze on her.

"Why, hello again, Seeker," Varric said with airy superiority. "I'm glad you could join us for this little ceremony."

Of course, the fact that _she_ was waiting on _him_ and not the other way around went unsaid. The lengths Varric went to for the sake of annoying her truly boggled the mind.

Cassandra took a deep breath and inclined her head slightly to Aaron. "Thank you for coming. I know you dislike crowds, but it is important that we be seen as unified in our cause."

Aaron nodded, his head tracking over the various people gathering. "I think I'll be fine, as long as I am not expected to speak."

Varric chuckled as if Aaron was joking. "That's the spirit, Fluffy. You already look the part, so no need for fancy speeches. Let the closed-up Breach do the talking. Reminds me of this time when Hawke and I…"

Cassandra listened with increasing skepticism as Varric launched into a wildly implausible story about a short toast at a Wintersend party which ultimately resulted in a usurer's vault mysteriously emptying and half the Kirkwall alienage celebrating in the streets.

 _When did Varric become so genial with Aaron?_ Cassandra wondered.

For his part, Aaron seemed content to let Varric spin fantastical tales about his adventures. Cassandra found herself relaxing in their presence. The fact that Aaron also enjoyed Varric's stories normalized him somewhat, and put her more at ease. Unbidden, the thought occurred to Cassandra to introduce him to _Swords and Shields,_ just to see his reaction, before Cassandra violently purged the notion from her mind, blushing furiously.

"Ah! Ser Aaron, Lady Cassandra!" Josephine called out from the growing crowd, interrupting the story. She slowly picked her way towards them, trying to avoid getting mud on her shoes or slipping on the half-frozen slush. She stopped before Aaron and somehow gave a perfect, sweeping curtsy despite holding her heavy, cumbersome writing board.

"It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Ser Aaron," Josephine said with an oddly feral glint to her eyes. "I am Josephine Montilyet, Ambassador of the Inquisition."

To Cassandra's immense surprise, Aaron returned her curtsy with a stiff, rather antiquated formal bow. "The pleasure is mine, Lady Ambassador. I am relieved to know that the Inquisition has diplomatic aims. As with the Blight, building alliances should prove vital to resolving this crisis."

Josephine gave Aaron a look of surprise and frank respect. "Thank you, that is gratifying to hear. At times, it feels like few people appreciate the art. Indeed, there is something that you could do that would help me immensely. You see, in conducting diplomacy, _openness_ and _honesty_ are the key to formulating a—"

"That's quite enough, Josie," Leliana said, detaching from a nearby group of scouts that had probably been listening in the entire time. She swiftly glided over to lay a hand on Josephine's ruffled shoulder. "We should respect Aaron's request for privacy. I will provide you with all the information you need to know, so please don't pester him for details he isn't willing to share."

Even Cassandra could tell from her tone that Leliana wasn't affording Josephine the option to press the point, but Josephine was nothing if not persistent.

"Leliana, I can only stall the nobles for so long!" Josephine said firmly. "I need to know _something_ about Aaron's background! His _species,_ at the very least!"

At that, she gave Aaron an expectant look.

"Do not ask and I shall tell no lies," Aaron said reluctantly.

Josephine looked offended for an instant before hiding the reaction, then looked to Leliana, who shook her head warningly. "As I said before, he is just a wandering apostate with no land or titles, Josie, and that's all you or the nobility really need to know."

Josephine's polite smile turned very brittle. "I… see. When royal missives from _kings_ and _queens_ come flooding in, demanding to know more about the Knight of Andraste, I'll just… try to change the subject, I suppose."

An awkward silence descended on the group. Neither Aaron nor Leliana seemed inclined to respond.

"Great," Varric said loudly, clapping his hands together and rubbing them. "Anyway, where's Curly? We need to get this flag unfurled already…"

* * *

After the symbolic dedication of Haven to the Inquisition was complete, Cassandra cornered Aaron before he could slip back into the dungeons.

"Come with me, Aaron." Cassandra said, beckoning him as she walked down the road through Haven.

Aaron followed two steps behind.

"May I ask where we're going?" Aaron finally asked as they passed under the front gates.

"Tomorrow, the Inquisition will be bringing you into uncontrolled territory in the Hinterlands to rendezvous with Revered Mother Giselle, who is assisting refugees. We will certainly see rifts and battle along the way, and I have no idea what your combat capabilities are. So I am taking you to the sparring grounds to find out." Cassandra explained patiently.

Aaron's stride broke for a step or two, then he caught up and walked beside her as she made it to the racks of training weapons sitting outside a tent near the sparring area. "Is sparring against me really necessa—"

"Yes. If nothing else, we need to keep you sharp." Cassandra said, picking up a blunted training sword from the rack and tossing it at Aaron.

Aaron's hand snatched out and caught the weapon. He then held it at arm's length, radiating reluctance. "If we have reached the point where I'm forced to do battle, then something has gone terribly wrong. I'm the _only_ one that can seal rifts, I should be kept as far from the fighting as possible. There is no margin for error."

Cassandra put some shove into it as she thrust a wooden shield into his other hand. If Aaron thought she would allow this cowardice, then he was sorely mistaken. "That is not practical, and you know it. The Inquisition will be spread thin as it is, for the rifts are scattered across much of Thedas. The longer we take to seal each rift, the more demons come into our world to wreak havoc. Even if we could afford the time and resources to secure each rift before your arrival, demons will certainly appear as you try to close the rift, so you must be able to defend yourself."

"Fair enough," Aaron allowed. "Though I still think we should refrain from reckless conflicts whenever possible. I hope you don't expect me to be sporting or honorable like some nobleman in a duel. There is no such thing as an unfair advantage when the world is literally at stake."

"That is true, but it is still better to train you to be able to defend yourself and never use the skills, than to not train and end up needing them. Who knows what demons or assassins may strike when there is no one else to protect you? You are a _target,_ and not all fights will be on the terms we choose." Cassandra pressed.

Aaron sighed. "I cannot deny the logic of your argument, even if I had hoped to avoid fighting if I could. What tricks I do have, I would rather keep in reserve."

"Keep your tricks," Cassandra said dismissively. "They say you were found with an axe, not a mage's staff, so show me the limits of your martial skills."

Aaron hefted the dull sword, waving it gracelessly. "I am… unaccustomed to using this kind of weapon."

"Evidently." Cassandra said, biting back a harsher comment about his ineptitude.

"I am experienced with polearms," Aaron said defensively. "When I don't have a weapon, I fight unarmed or use my magic. It has served me well thus far against the beasts I encounter."

"Fighting _people_ is an entirely different thing," Cassandra said, her skepticism growing. "Are you telling me you have _no_ experience fighting armed opponents?"

"Only darkspawn." Aaron said, setting down the sword and shield and hefting a wooden sparring maul with a small head and blunted ends. He held it with practiced skill, sliding his hands into balanced positions and swinging it experimentally.

Cassandra rubbed at her growing headache. "Darkspawn are untrained beasts that fight with no intellect or skill. They barely count as armed opponents. Do you have _no_ formal training?"

"My only teacher has been much experience." Aaron said flatly.

"So, no." Cassandra sighed, picking up a sword of her own and a round wooden shield. "I suppose we'll have to start at the beginning, then. You doubtless have many bad habits we need to break. But before we do that, I need to see what they are. Come, let us spar. The one who remains standing will be the victor."

Cassandra led Aaron to the loose ring of trampled earth that constituted the sparring grounds, and almost immediately, all nearby activity ceased. An excited murmur arose as soldiers, messengers, pages, clergy, and random bystanders all stopped what they were doing to gather around the two.

Cassandra smiled slightly as she brought up her shield and took a proper stance, ready to face Aaron in mock battle. No matter how many times she fought, the thrill of anticipation remained the same. Their audience only raised the stakes.

A fight between one of the elite Seekers of Truth and the Knight of Andraste was going to end up extremely embarrassing for one of them, that was certain, as the outcome of this match would probably circulate through half of Thedas before nightfall. Reputations and expectations could be hypocritical things—no doubt, _both_ of them were expected to win, and anything less would be seen as a disappointment.

"I am ready. Let us begin." Cassandra said, slowly edging closer into Aaron's reach.

Aaron straightened from his usual slouch, resting his maul across his broad shoulders in a casually intimidating fashion. "Very well. I warn you, Seeker. I am slow to my wrath, but when I fight, I fight to _win."_

Cassandra didn't bother answering that. He was confident, probably because he weighed as much as two or three of her. But Cassandra had crushed too many condescending egos to count, so she wasn't intimidated. Win or lose, Cassandra was not going to let Aaron out of the ring without bruises to teach him not to underestimate the Right Hand of the Divine.

Cassandra focused, went still, and then let her fury burst forth like a dam breaking. With a single movement, she planted her back foot into the icy ground, twisted with her entire body so violently her bones and ligaments popped, and thrust her sword directly at Aaron's stomach.

Aaron was big and heavy, and that meant that even if he were fast as well, he wouldn't be able to dodge as nimbly as if he were fast and _small_. Still, his reaction time was excellent as he flinched to the side to deflect the main force of the thrust, and immediately pressed forward to counterattack with the maul.

Cassandra's shield turned the heavy blow, and her blade was already whipping to the side in a feint, then changed direction instantly to smack him across the shoulder. Either his weapon was too slow for him to properly parry, or he simply had no concept of blocking or guarding, because he pressed the attack with no heed for his own defense. She punished him for it, deflecting his blows and striking again and again when his attacks left him open.

Aaron rushed her, and she nimbly sidestepped him like he was a charging bull, scoring a hit on his ribs as he passed. Aaron pivoted with impressive speed and Cassandra met him once again, using her shield to pin his weapon before he could swing, and bringing his advance to a halt. She could tell that he was startled by her sheer power—most were. Thanks to her training and Seeker abilities, Cassandra was far stronger than she appeared, probably about as strong as Aaron himself, even if he could probably overwhelm her with sheer weight alone.

Aaron suddenly shifted as his armored boot came up in a swift, brutal kick, breaking Cassandra's lock and driving the air from her lungs. She disengaged, fighting to regain her breath, her heart hammering in her chest.

Aaron lunged after her, attacking as relentlessly as a mad mabari. Cassandra recovered what stamina she could, marveling at the sheer violence of Aaron's attacks. He fought vicious, fast, and dirty, which was the opposite of what she had expected. With his heavy armor and cautious personality, she would have thought he favored a slow and defensive style.

Cassandra finally saw a weakness as Aaron brought the hammer back for a big swing, and struck. But instead of trying to block, Aaron took the hit on his armor and rapidly twisted his arms, sending the end of the hammer swinging towards Cassandra's head.

 _That opening was a trap!_ Cassandra thought. She brought up her shield, but the side angle didn't have the leverage to take the strike entirely, and then her helmet was ringing and she was staggering to the side from the force of the blow.

Cassandra recovered her senses quickly enough to leap back from the swing that followed, bringing her shield up again.

Aaron used her dodge to take advantage of his greater reach, and swung the hammer in broader arcs, pressing her back even further. He was lengthening the space between them, a common and deadly-effective tactic for two-handed wielders.

However, a great deal of pain and fighting experience had taught Cassandra that extending their reach could easily signal their attacks and put them off-balance.

Cassandra waited for the hammer to arc back for another swing, and she closed the distance with a lunge, keeping her sword and shield held straight in front of her. She was forced to abort her charge and dance back as he swiped with the end of the hammer again. Truly, his reach was incredible. It wasn't just his very tall stature—from the way he moved, he could extend his weapon much further than Cassandra would have believed possible, and yet she still suspected he was somehow keeping a little extra distance in reserve.

Cassandra jumped back to avoid the hammer as it swung in a sweeping uppercut that could have shattered kneecaps. Again, Aaron capitalized on the position of his weapon, and instead of slowly swinging the head back down, he employed the opposite end, lunging forward and jabbing it down in a powerful pommel-strike.

Cassandra expertly lowered and angled her shield, and the shaft deflected, but not before causing something to crack ominously in her shield. Her sword lashed out and hit Aaron's gauntleted hand, even as it was still moving. The blow was not hard enough to dent armor or break fingers, but it was enough to interrupt his swing. Cassandra stepped further in so he couldn't bring the maul to bear, but was stunned when Aaron actually _let go of his weapon_ with his left hand, which darted out like a viper and grabbed her sword arm.

Aaron was strong in general, but his grip strength was absolutely _absurd_. She could feel the crushing pressure even through her steel vambrace. Cassandra immediately tried a maneuver that could break almost any grab with simple leverage, and though she managed to briefly overpower Aaron's whole arm, making him stumble slightly, his grip on her might as well have been a shackle. She'd sooner snap her bones like a twig than break his hold.

Before Cassandra could overcome her surprise and break free, Aaron's iron grip twisted, and the sword was ripped from her hand, to the cheers of the onlooking crowd. It fell to the ground several feet away. Aaron then hauled on Cassandra's arm, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to strike her with the maul in his right hand, but as he continued pulling, she realized that he intended to use his greater weight to throw her to the ground and win the match.

Going against her instinct to pull against him, Cassandra instead pushed herself along with him. As the resistance vanished, Aaron overcompensated and was wrenched off-balance, and Cassandra used their combined pull to punch the metal boss of her shield directly into Aaron's visored face, the blow connecting with a tremendous _clang_ and the collective gasps of the crowd. The weakened wood in the right half of the of the shield shattered, and Cassandra's left arm immediately went numb from the impact, but her right arm was suddenly free from Aaron's grip.

Aaron staggered back heavily, and Cassandra pressed forward through the throbbing pain, keeping her balance low and raining heavy blows with the shield's metal boss in her left hand and heavy punches with her armored right to keep Aaron from regaining his balance. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aaron's armored boot slip on the muddy ground, and she shoved him mightily with her shield, then kicked out his leg from under him. Aaron fell to the ground with a spectacular crash of armor and a whooshing exhalation of breath.

Cassandra felt a surge of fierce exultation, as she stood over Aaron's fallen body. Bruised knuckles and getting bashed in the helmet was well worth the payback.

Cassandra took off her helmet, feeling the cold wind blow through hair that was damp with sweat. "I _also_ fight to win," she said with a smile.

The gathered crowd cheered thunderously. The victory felt like the Maker had parted the clouds and sent a sunbeam to fall upon her. Warm, bright, and triumphant.

Before her ego could get too out of control, Cassandra remembered to be a gracious victor and offered her hand to Aaron, and, after a moment's hesitation, he took it and she helped him up. "Are you injured?" she asked.

"Only my pride. You are _amazingly_ skilled," Aaron wheezed, sounding genuinely impressed. "And incredibly strong as well. I must confess, I am surprised that I lost that match. I did not hold back, and I thought I had won when I disarmed you."

"A warrior isn't truly disarmed unless you cut off her arms, and her legs for good measure," Cassandra said sagely.

Aaron nodded. "I will certainly remember _that_ lesson. Now are you satisfied with my performance?"

"Your guard is all but nonexistent. If you can do nothing but recklessly attack, you will die in a fight against a skilled opponent," Cassandra said bluntly. Then, she decided to assuage Aaron's confidence a bit. It wouldn't do to be a sore winner. "However, you were quicker than I expected, and quite skilled with your weapon. That's good. We can work with that."

Aaron gave her a small bow. "I look forward to learning from you, Seeker."

Cassandra quirked an eyebrow at him. "I'm curious, though. Why didn't you use any of your magic? I can nullify it, but it still might have helped you before I got the opportunity. Most mages reach for their magic without even thinking."

Aaron idly straightened the bear pelt over his mantle. "In truth, my combat magic is simple and crude, and I have little fine control over it. I have no spells that would have been particularly useful in that match, and it was safer not to try anything."

Cassandra could tell he was hiding something. Even if he was being honest, he wasn't telling the _whole_ truth, but she nodded in agreement anyway. Perhaps she would try to gain his trust after all, like Varric had said. "I thank you for it. We will have to train with it later, however. It will help prepare you for facing rogue templars. But first, let me give you some training exercises and stances. Your footwork is atrocious."

Cassandra went through a more formalized training regime with Aaron, who had difficulty following her spoken instructions yet displayed an exceptional skill at watching her movements and mimicking them. As the sun began dipping further towards the mountains, Cassandra retired for the day. She soon found herself sleepless in bed, dwelling on Aaron's magical abilities.

Cassandra was almost glad that Aaron's magical talents were poor and untrained, assuming he was being truthful about them. The thought of powerful mages being heavily armored and using a warrior's skills with any degree of proficiency on top of their natural abilities was enough to chill anyone's blood. Even lightly-armored knight-enchanters with melee skills were nightmarish enough as it was. Warrior-mages seemed _improper_ on some level, like cheating, though Cassandra scarcely believed the world was fair. But rather than mastering both skills, Aaron had clearly focused much more effort into training as a warrior. If there was any justice in the world, that meant he was sacrificing magical proficiency, or compensating for having little magic to begin with. Was his magic only useful for escaping? It seemed plausible, it was common for hedge mages to manifest one ability and one ability alone.

Still, no matter how much heartburn the idea gave her, it would be better for everyone if Aaron were trained in magic as well as conventional fighting. When all else failed, there would be no such thing as an unfair advantage when it came to keeping the one who could seal rifts alive. Aaron was right about that much, she'd grant him. Solas seemed as good a tutor as any. His mastery was obvious. She would have to ask him for his aid once again, it seemed. Perhaps he could help train Aaron as they traveled to the Hinterlands.

She really shouldn't feel anxious making Aaron stronger. Aaron was on their side, ostensibly. Besides, he wasn't the only one holding back the full extent of their abilities. No matter how well she and Solas trained him, the fact remained that he was a mage, and she was a Seeker of Truth. Those abilities gave her an enormous advantage, if it ever came down to a _real_ fight between them.

The thought reminded Cassandra of the Vigil she had endured to gain her formidable powers, and that memory, in turn, led her to a dreamless sleep at last.

* * *

 **A/N**

Phew! That was a big chapter, over eight thousand words. I will try to keep them shorter going forward, and compensate by releasing them more quickly. I think that a quicker update schedule would be more appreciated than longer chapters. Thanks for reading, and please, help me improve the story by letting me know what you like and what you don't in the reviews!


	9. Interlude 1

Interlude 1

* * *

It was the night before they set out to the Hinterlands, and Solas was nearing the limit of his patience.

Solas was not used to being denied information of any kind. He had seen the patterns of people and institutions reiterated countless times, with every conceivable variation on the themes. For centuries, he had been accustomed to being able to take the accurate measure of someone with hardly more than a glance, knowing them and predicting their behavior even better than they themselves. Race, gender, religion, creed—it didn't matter in the slightest. Solas was _that_ experienced at reading people.

And now Solas found himself utterly _stymied_ by the mystery that was Aaron, and it galled him to no end.

At first, Solas had been content to wait, but only because he'd expected that Aaron's true identity would be common knowledge within days. Yet here they were, on the eve of their first expedition, and still no answers were in sight. There were simply too many possibilities and too little evidence to narrow them down. Solas' curiosity was, as Varric had put it, eating him alive.

Worse yet, all his efforts to surreptitiously observe Aaron's sleeping mind in the Fade had failed. It was not something he would normally do, but frustration coupled with his burning desire to _know_ had overridden his ethical considerations and his fear of being caught.

However, even in the realm of the Fade, Aaron proved elusive. Aaron apparently did not sleep very often, or perhaps his dreams were different somehow. Solas' search for him in the Fade had been in vain. He was a mage, his dreams should have been a beacon in the Fade—yet not even the faintest wisp was stirred by his presence.

Finally, after he could wait no longer, Solas dismissed all of the subtle wisps and spirits he had used to spy, and went in search himself.

* * *

Under other circumstances, Solas would have enjoyed exploring Haven in the Fade.

The village was quite old, by human standards. It had sufficient time to truly etch itself into the realm of the Fade, layered with the echoes of many generations of cultists that had slowly grown more corrupted with each generation. The village still thrummed with the violence of the purge that the cult had ultimately orchestrated against its parent sect, vibrating with the terror and bloodlust like the plucked string of a lute. It harmonized and mingled with the more recent massacre, the extinction of the cult ten years ago at the hands of a grim, noble young Warden, a shapeshifting witch, a snide golem, and a younger version of their very own Leliana. For all that the human had barely aged physically, this ghostly impression seemed like a completely different person, but that was the subjective nature of the Fade's recollection.

 _Diverting, but irrelevant to my current task,_ Solas thought as he watched the spirits reenact the battle between the cultists and the Warden's group.

With an effort not unlike refocusing one's eyes on a close object, Solas' surroundings shifted to the Haven of the present day, as the Fade saw it. Different aspects of the village were emphasized and exaggerated, seeming to warp in space as well as time, the landscape shaped by the perceptions of those who now lived here and the changes they had made. The difference was so drastic, the village was hardly even recognizable as being the same one that stood just a decade prior.

Solas expanded his senses and began his search. He would overturn the very stones if necessary to find where Aaron was hiding.

Solas found the dreaming minds of many people, none of whom even noticed his presence, neither mages nor the mundane. None of them were his quarry, and he moved into the Fade's rendition of the Haven chantry. That had been the first place Solas had checked the nights before, but Aaron's sleeping mind had never been in the building he had spent nearly all his waking hours in. It was strange indeed.

Solas descended into the musty dungeon once again, his head circling all around, trying to find some sort of clue, some sort of discrepancy between the dungeon of the Fade and the real one.

With a jolt, he realized something was indeed out of place. His attention focused on a section of wall, completely nondescript save for a curious patch of pure black.

That wasn't just a shadow on the wall, it was a _hole_. It was the size of a single brick; not even the slightest person could possibly have fit through it. The Fade was not a place of logic, however, and doorways and passages had a vastly disproportionate significance to this reality.

Solas pressed his hand against the blackness, feeling a resistance as if the blackness were made of solidified air, and _willed_ himself through.

With a familiar instantaneous shift and momentary disorientation, Solas found himself within a dream that could only be Aaron's.

Solas did not recognize the place, but it was immediately obvious that he was underground, in a Thaig of some sort. Not Orzammar—Solas' knowledge of the dwarves was extremely limited, but he could recognize that much.

Aaron's dream fairly _hummed_ with emotion. It was almost stifling in its atmosphere of loneliness and grief. Even Solas was shocked by its intensity.

It was strange, Solas thought, examining his surroundings. He was unable to find the source of Aaron's distress, or how this place would even relate to those feelings.

The blocky, gray stone buildings were bathed in the light of many-colored glowstones and lamps, which made the place festive and nearly as bright as day. The buildings were all stacked up atop one another in a haphazard manner, forming broad roads as well as tight alleys, with stone bridges and stairways reaching out to connect them. The ground itself was so rolling and hilly that it occasionally gave way to stairs, lending everything a vertical complexity that Solas had seldom seen in other cities. There were brightly colored merchants' stalls and shopfronts set up amongst the many levels, packed with tools, jewelry, books, and intricate textiles. It was obvious that this had once been a trade quarter, a popular place bustling with life and activity.

Yet now it stood silent and empty.

There was not a single person in sight. Not even the facsimiles of people that the Fade produced, and there was certainly no Aaron to be found. On closer inspection, there was a thick film of dust over everything, a soft layer between Solas' bare feet and the cobblestones. It was a patina of age and disuse suggested that no one had been alive here for decades or possibly even centuries. Everything had seemingly been in the process of being packed away, awaiting the return of people, but the people had never come back.

Solas noticed that there were footprints in the gray dust. They were very recent, and seemed to go up the widest road in the quarter and towards a vast, pyramid-like structure that rose up in the distance. Solas checked his surroundings one last time, and followed the footprints, a mounting unease tugging at his heart.

* * *

As the ziggurat loomed larger above him, Solas realized that this was a place of _profound_ importance to Aaron. It weighed down the Fade around it like a stone on a bedsheet. The emotion of the place was a force gusting against Solas as he moved forward.

It was simply _astounding_ that a demon hadn't possessed Aaron yet, if his emotions were so completely open like this. Most mages learned very quickly to build some sort of wall between their power and their emotions, to restrain them lest they attract demons. However, Aaron was akin to a man in a dark forest full of monsters, screaming at the top of his lungs instead of staying quiet.

Then again, Aaron _had_ been extremely hard to find in the first place. It was an uncomfortable contradiction, and Solas was at a loss as to how to explain it. It was almost as if Aaron's presence had been muffled—or he had been _deafened_. The Fade held a perverse reciprocity like that, sometimes.

Solas ascended the wide, smooth black steps of the ziggurat. There was no gate, no wall, no guard posts. Not a keep nor a palace, then. The ziggurat lacked any sort of door that could close, only had a vast, yawning entrance to the bottom tier of the structure, the walls of which were decorated in the austere, angular style of the dwarves. Solas stepped inside. In the perfectly still air, the dust had failed to gain much purchase past the threshold. There would be no more following footprints here on these bare stone floors.

The interior of the monument was a hall filled with regular, identical black marble pillars holding intricately wrought metal sconces, glowing with a soft orange light. The walls between the pillars were covered in stone mosaics, endlessly repeating into the distance as if infinite. Shockingly, the dark ceiling was decorated with tiny points of light—they looked for all the world like stars.

What strange sect of dwarves would pay tribute to the nighttime sky in such a way? From what Solas knew, that would not comport with their religious practices.

Despite his earlier apprehension, Solas felt himself being drawn into the vast, fascinating place.

As he drew closer to the mosaics, he saw that each one held a different scene of history, and he could feel a powerful source of Lyrium was contained in them.

These were the Memories, Solas realized. Experiences, written directly into Lyrium. But they have been made into... artwork?

Somehow, even through Aaron's miasma of emotion, Solas could feel the attachment of each of these scenes, an echo of the feelings Aaron had associated with them. A whisper of wonder at the mosaic of a dwarven explorer, a susurrus of joy at the stone image of two lovers locked in an embrace. It continued down the enormous hall—sorrow, triumph, epiphany, tension, levity, curiosity, love. At the last, Solas paused to look closer at the mosaic, feeling slightly transgressive as he did so, as if he weren't already violating Aaron's privacy just by being there.

The mosaic was a simple and unassuming portrayal of three people on some kind of trek, two women and a man, sharing equal prominence and holding up what seemed to be a map. It was incongruous, but Solas wasn't mistaken, Aaron had felt love here, gentle yet strong. It was the sort of love one would feel towards dear companions, those that one had shared much of life's trials with.

A journey, perhaps? Did he live vicariously through these Memories, as Solas did with the Fade?

Solas frowned at that. It was an unsettling thought, considering he had next to no experience with the dwarves. The Fade and spirits took little notice of their presence, except in times of great bloodshed or when present in another race's memory. The idea that there was an entire _world_ of experiences he had never dreamed of in his long slumber…

Solas hurried onwards, further into the ziggurat.

The only architectural variation in the ebon ziggurat was the regular branching corridors. Everything else was exactly the same, a great even grid of parallel lines that made it feel like being surrounded by mirrors. It was a strange sense of aesthetics the dwarves had possessed; they valued precision over beauty. The only thing preventing the halls from being identical to each other was the artwork.

Finally, Solas sighted something different, a distant figure standing before one of the mosaics at the end of the corridor.

Solas immediately ducked behind one of the ubiquitous glossy black pillars. This section of the ziggurat seemed no different from the others, but some of the wall spaces were blank, not yet holding one of the Memories. Somehow, it gave off a sense of living change rather than incompleteness.

As soon as he dared, Solas peeked out, hoping to get a better look. What he saw chilled his blood.

The black and red figure was looking up at one of the mosaics, but he was too far away to make out anything else. Then, after a heartbeat, the figure _walked into the mosaic,_ as if it were just another doorway.

Everything else in this dream had been so unusually firm and unambiguous, Solas was startled by the sudden intrusion of dream logic.

Nevertheless, Solas quickly gathered his nerve and silently padded his way over to the mosaic. When it came into view, the ominous feeling returned in full force, sending Solas' heart pounding.

This mosaic was obviously not like the others. It was far more crude, made in a completely different artistic style. More basic, almost tribal, similar to an ancient cave painting. It was mostly black, fading to red at the base, and an indistinct white-skinned person stood at the center, its arms raised in what could be desire or agony. Above it loomed a simplified but immediately recognizable sight: the Black City.

Icy chills broke out over Solas' body. Something was terribly wrong about this, something that scratched at the very edge of his comprehension.. _._

In a rush, Solas realized that none of the other mosaics showed any depiction whatsoever of the Blights, the darkspawn, or the fall of the Dwarven Empire. Solas hadn't even been aware of this omission before, but the conclusion was undeniable. This thaig must have fallen during the very first Blight, or possibly before. This mosaic, then, was a more recent addition. _Much_ more recent, if Solas' instincts were correct. It seemed likely that Aaron had been the lone figure Solas had seen, and he had created this Memory himself. Had he learned how to make this mosaic from one of the others? And if so, _why?_ What was the significance of this picture? What Memories did it contain?

Solas needed to find answers.

Steeling himself, Solas reached out a hand and commanded the mosaic to grant him entrance.

* * *

This time, instead of an abrupt shift of location, Solas seemed to _melt_ into the Memory. He found himself standing in a vast cavern, with Tevinter-style pillars and ruins dotting an underground lake. A horrific stench assaulted Solas with no warning, making him gag. The air was thick with the odor of rotting meat, unwashed bodies, sewage, and stagnant water. There was also a disturbing, fishy, musky tang to the air that Solas desperately wished he hadn't correctly identified.

Looking around, Solas could see he was standing on the side of a thin, slanted platform of rock on the edge of the lake. Aaron was nowhere to be seen, and from Solas' vantage point he obviously couldn't be anywhere on the left side of the cavern. Solas clambered over the slimy rocks to his right, hoping to gain a vantage point with which to spy on Aaron. When he reached the summit, he nearly lost his grip when he saw what inhabited the rest of the cavern.

Upon a short peninsula of rock that jutted out into the lake, there was a gigantic, pale gray monstrosity—a darkspawn broodmother. Her grotesque, bloated form nearly filled the entire end of the peninsula, dark tendrils and tentacles reaching out from her pale mountain of flesh like a twisted cross between intestines and roots.

As Solas fought to control his horror and revulsion, he realized this was no ordinary broodmother. She was _mutated,_ even by the standards of the darkspawn, simultaneously more and less human than any other broodmother he'd ever seen in nightmares.

Her upper body could have belonged to a lovely woman, once. She somehow retained a lithe torso and arms, a face with fair features and large, round eyes. Slick black hair cascaded down her shoulders, matching runnels of dark blood that stained her front, no doubt from the people she had devoured. As if to counterbalance the startling humanity of her upper body, her hands and forearms were covered in black, chitinous plates, and six enormous, segmented, insectile limbs sprouted from her back. The swaying tentacles of her lower body were covered in cruel spines.

As Solas stared, transfixed, as a comparatively tiny figure approached the monstrosity. He was clad in black, spiky armor and wore a red cape. His head was concealed by a scale armor cowl, and his back was to Solas, so he couldn't see the figure's face.

The figure slowly kneeled before the calmly watching broodmother, heedless of the huge fanged tentacles within arm's reach. Aaron's deep, raspy voice resonated in the cavern.

"I bring glad tidings, Mother."

* * *

Solas bolted awake, hot and sweating. He pushed himself upright and compulsively rubbed a hand over his mouth, struggling to control his clenching throat. He tasted bile in the back of his mouth.

This was _ruinous_. Aaron was a _darkspawn,_ no better than Corypheus. Aaron was obviously not one of the Magisters Sidereal like Corypheus was, but that hardly mattered. He had intelligence and speech nonetheless, and that made him all the more dangerous. The ziggurat—that had been the creature _studying_ , learning to pass for a person. It was sickening.

All of Solas' plans had been upended in an instant.

Solas would consider his next course of action later. For now, he needed to get _away_.

Solas grabbed his belongings and left Haven, vanishing into the night without drawing the notice of a single living soul.

He didn't even leave a note.

* * *

 **A/N**

In which we find out that Solas isn't quite as clever as he thinks he is. At least, not as clever as Leliana, who came much closer to guessing Aaron's true identity. One thing I found interesting about Solas' characterization in canon is that, despite having at least a millennium of experience under his belt, Solas is still quite able to be taken by surprise. In fact, though his extreme longevity has granted him peerless wisdom and skill, it seems to have made him quite mentally rigid in some ways, though he isn't nearly as bad as Corypheus in that regard. Solas at least had time to acclimate to changing world events.

Don't worry, Solas isn't gone for good. He's going to be taking on a different role in this story, one which may not be immediately obvious.

Once again, thanks to Bioware, thanks for reading, and please let me know how I'm doing in the reviews!


	10. Chapter 9

One Step Ahead Chapter 9

* * *

Varric was not a morning person.

He had plenty of time to reflect on this fact as he forced himself out of his warm bed, wincing as his feet touched the frigid stone floor of the bunkhouse. In the days following the initial chaos, he'd managed to discreetly move some coin around and secure a tiny private room for himself. That hard-ass of a quartermaster had the eyes of an eagle and the nose of a mabari, though, and she hadn't made it easy for him. Haven was under military occupation, and resources were stretched thin as it was. Be that as it may, certain things were no longer negotiable for Varric. Namely, having his own room. And even now that he had his own room, he had none of the luxuries he'd grown accustomed to up in Kirkwall—probably a little _too_ accustomed, if he was being honest. Chief among which, it now seemed, were warm rugs.

A glance out the single, murky window confirmed that dawn had not quite broken over the mountains. The eastern sky was lit a pale orange with a sickly green tint. Today was the day that the Inquisition journeyed out of the mountains and into the Hinterlands. By all accounts, that place was now a lawless free-for-all between apostates, templars, demons, and refugees. Fantastic.

Varric selected a reasonably clean coat hanging over his writing chair, and tugged on some breeches he found lying on the floor. Then he quickly put on his soft leather boots to spare his feet from the cold floor. In hindsight, he should have left them next to the bed.

In a quick and practiced motion, Varric pulled back his hair and tied it into a ponytail, and just like that, he was ready for the day. Varric was a big believer in getting ready for the day _before_ going to bed, and so his packed satchel and his freshly-oiled Bianca both leaned against the wall next to the door. His satchel held only the bare essentials: Bianca's spare bolts and tools, three healing potions, his journal, thirty gold sovereigns, and a change of clothes. Everything else like food and camping supplies he could buy, hunt, or shamelessly mooch. It paid to travel light, especially when you expected to be dodging errant fireballs and arrows.

Varric slung the satchel over his shoulder and picked up Bianca, running his hands along the smooth stock, feeling how it gave way to the fittings of the trigger, each piece of wood and metal curved and shaped with nearly flawless craftsmanship, the machine lovingly maintained despite her many years of battle. Beneath his fingertips, the mechanism hummed with the faintest song of Lyrium, each enchanted piece working in concert to make the machine come alive. Almost immediately, the anxiety for today's excursion began to weaken its grip on his stomach, and he relaxed.

Nothing would go wrong today, not on his watch.

* * *

Varric wandered by the apothecary to see if Chuckles was ready yet. The elf liked to spend most of his spare time sleeping—or _dreaming,_ as it were—and Varric had noticed Solas was waking up later and later every day, though the increased sleep hadn't seemed to improve the elf's worsening mood lately.

Solas was nowhere to be found, however. Varric wondered if he'd already headed down to the village gate, or perhaps he'd just overslept. Just to be sure, Varric went up to the bunkhouse where Solas had been staying and pounded at the door.

Nothing.

"Huh. Okay then," Varric muttered, and headed down the path.

Chuckles was not, in fact, at the gate. Nor were the Seeker or Fluffy, either. Varric was starting to get annoyed. _Don't tell me I woke up at this unholy hour just to wait on a bunch of laggards!_

Varric turned to the gate guard, a baggy-eyed, scruffy young man leaning against a mabari statue, who seemed to be struggling to stay awake. "Hey, have you seen a bald, broody elf come through here?"

The guard yawned expansively, a puff of white fog curling out of his mouth before he answered. "Nope. No elves in the last few hours... 'cept that one squirrely redheaded she-elf."

Varric frowned. "How about Seeker Cassandra or the Knight of Andraste?"

"O'er there." The guard pointed. Varric turned around and spotted Aaron, Cassandra and Josephine just outside of the smithy, which was already clanging loudly, no doubt ruining other people's attempts to sleep. He jogged over to join them.

As he was walking over, Aaron went inside. The bald, bristly blacksmith Harritt was standing inside, and he started to argue with Aaron about something. Cassandra was the first to catch sight of Varric out of the corner of her eye.

"Oh, it's you." Cassandra said irritably, stuffing her hands into her armpits for warmth and returning her attention to Aaron and Harritt, who were now speaking in low voices to each other.

"Good morning to you, too, Seeker. What's going on here?" Varric asked. Cassandra only scoffed.

"Hello, Master Tethras," Josephine said, though she too seemed to be annoyed by something. "There was a problem with locating the weapon recovered from Ser Aaron when he fell from the Breach."

"You don't say." Varric said, turning to eavesdrop on the gruff blacksmith and armored apostate with undisguised fascination, sensing that drama was about to ensue. He was grateful that there were no real walls to the smithy.

"I was told it was _here,_ locked in the armory!" Aaron said disbelievingly. "And now you say you _lost_ it?"

"The bloody thing isn't _lost,_ it's been _stolen,"_ said Harritt.

"That doesn't matter. It _must_ be found. I can't leave until it is." Aaron said, just barely audible above the clanging din of the smithy. He began pacing restlessly. "Its name is _Lothak._ It is the _last_ halberd forged and enchanted by Farajan Fireheart, the _only_ Paragon smith in Dunammar's history! It was wielded by Paragon Vestri during the—"

 _"Enough!"_ Cassandra barked out, stomping into the smithy. Varric and Josephine followed close behind. "We don't have time for a pointless history lesson. We have a long day of travel before us. Harritt, just get Aaron an axe or something so we can _be on our way."_

" _Wait!"_ Aaron said, his voice cracking in desperation. "There... there may be an alternative. _I_ can find who took Lothak, if I hurry."

"The longer we delay, the more demons pour from the sky, and the more people _die_. We are _not_ going to waste time on this." Cassandra said, her tone brooking no refusal.

 _"Please."_ Aaron said, his shoulders slumping. "Lothak is not just a powerful weapon. It's an artifact of dwarven history. I am _responsible_ for it. It _must_ be found, and I am the best one, the _only_ one who can track it down before we go. I can find it and meet you at the Imperial Highway before you can even reach it on horseback."

 _He seems strangely certain of that,_ Varric noted. Aaron usually hedged and avoided absolute statements like the plague, but suddenly he's certain when it comes to an obviously impossible feat? Weird.

"And just _how_ do you propose to do that?" the Seeker asked, her eyes narrowing.

"Magic." said Aaron.

"That isn't an answer!" said Cassandra, throwing up her arms in frustration.

Aaron clasped his hands together pleadingly. "It doesn't matter how I do it! I _beg_ you, let me pursue Lothak!"

"You didn't need my permission to disappear before," Cassandra said acidly.

There was a breathless silence. Even the blacksmith's apprentices had stopped their clanging to watch.

"...No. For the sake of peace between us... I will give up Lothak. I just hope you can appreciate what you ask of me." Aaron said, his voice hollow. To Varric, he sounded like someone who had just lost their house and all their belongings. "...It is strange. I knew taking Lothak with me was a risk, but somehow I never visualized myself _actually_ losing it. This is _my_ fault. I should never have brought it here."

Josephine smoothly stepped forward, speaking reassuringly. "I'm sure Sister Leliana's spy network will have no trouble finding whoever suddenly becomes rich from selling the Knight of Andraste's axe. In the interim, we simply need to find you a suitable replacement."

Varric raised an eyebrow. "What's _your_ interest in this, Ambassador? You're not a quartermaster or blacksmith, last I checked. And what were you even _doing_ here? I thought it would have taken a herd of druffalo to drag you out of bed at this _uncivilized_ hour."

Josephine closed her eyes and primly cleared her throat. "I certainly don't intend to make a habit of managing your party's weapons, but... late last night, I was struck with the thought that Ser Aaron should try to embrace his reputation as the Knight sent by Andraste, and not carry arms that signal allegiance to _other factions_ which are not nearly so esteemed. So I came down this morning to ensure he was properly equipped before he left."

Noticing Cassandra's confused frown, Harritt said, "I think what she means is, she doesn't want the Knight of Andraste to be seen carrying around a staff, lookin' like an _apostate."_

"I wouldn't quite put it like _that,_ but yes," Josephine ceded.

Varric snorted. The blacksmith was more politically savvy than the Seeker, which was both sad and pretty damn funny.

"Is Aaron's apostasy not common knowledge already?" Cassandra asked, surprised.

"Not... _as such,_ no. We are hardly advertising the fact, and Aaron _is_ known as the _Knight_ of Andraste, after all. That implies martial, rather than magical prowess. Revealing that he is actually an apostate mage may come as something of an unwelcome surprise, and cost us allies, or worse." Josephine said, shaking her head. "Aaron being seen as a _practicing_ apostate doesn't fit with the knightly, chivalrous image we are trying to cultivate."

"I am _not_ a knight, and I will not pretend to be one." Aaron said quietly, but firmly.

"Yeah, far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, Ambassador, but won't that just make people _more_ mad when they find out the truth?" Varric asked.

Josephine pursed her lips. "We aren't _lying,_ we're simply not correcting what others _may or may not_ assume. If they have already supported us, they will not be able to back out later without losing face, whereas more potential supporters might have condemned us from the start if they knew." she turned to Aaron, and continued persistently. "And even if you _weren't_ already made a knight by sheer affirmation, we could easily have you knighted. It would be a mere formality. Knight-Commander Cullen could even do it before you leave."

"My title is beside the point. I am a _mage_. If Lothak is gone, I can make better use of a Lyrium-infused staff than a nonmagical weapon." Aaron said, indicating a table with a row of three identical staves. Each had a mace-like head on one end, and a long spearhead with a crescent-shaped, bladed crosspiece on the other. He took one in his right hand, holding it up and causing a vortex of purple sparks to whirl around it. "This staff is nothing in comparison to Lothak, but it's the closest thing to an actual polearm in this place for some unfathomable—"

At that point, all this magical bullshit and talk of staves suddenly reminded Varric that Solas was not among their little group.

"Hey," Varric interrupted. "Have any of you seen Solas around? I came out here thinking he was with you. He wasn't in his bunk or anywhere in Haven that I've seen. Seeker, did you do something?"

"No," Cassandra said, surprised. Then her eyebrows furrowed. "Why would you assume _I_ did something? I'm not going to suddenly _disappear_ him just because he's an apostate. In case you haven't noticed..." she trailed off and gestured at Aaron.

"Your tolerance of my existence is touching," Aaron said flatly.

"Maybe—maybe he's just off getting breakfast or something," Josephine said hopefully. "He wouldn't just leave without saying a word, would he?"

There was a heavy silence following this statement.

"I'm going to wake Leliana," Cassandra said, brushing past Varric and out of the smithy.

* * *

As the sun rose further and further into the sky, no sign of Solas was to be found. It was like he had never even existed. He didn't leave a single possession, nor had he stolen a single thing.

Varric had dealt with disappearances before. Mages disappearing almost always ended up being bad news for everyone involved, and with all the demons that were just set loose on Thedas, the outlook was pretty terrible no matter how you looked at it. Even so, Varric somehow believed that Solas had left for his own reasons. It was simply too _neat_. Abominations just didn't do tidy disappearances, and someone definitely would have noticed if Solas had been taken against his will. That elf knew how to sling some spells.

Even though Varric believed that Solas was probably fine, his disappearance set everything off-kilter. Cassandra was visibly frustrated and embarrassed that this had happened right under her nose. Leliana was furious that she had missed the signs that he had wanted to leave, and was afraid that his knowledge of Aaron and the Inquisition would fall into the wrong hands. Aaron had grown even more quiet and sullen than before, and he was already sulking from losing his precious dwarven souvenir.

It was like things were falling apart before they could even get a chance to come together. Once again, Varric had the feeling that he was the only one who could actually do something about it. Nobody else was around to step up and unite the fractured party, so the task fell to him. It was a damn uncomfortable feeling, and Varric suddenly sympathized a lot more with the heroes in his novels, and with people like Hawke who had the burden of responsibility placed on their shoulders.

Varric went to see Aaron. He was standing on the pier over the frozen lake, looking out at the mountains. Oddly, he was holding the staff he had grabbed from the smithy upside-down, with the mace-like head planted near his feet and the blade pointing up. It made the weapon seem much more like a spear.

"Hello, Varric." Aaron said tonelessly as Varric approached behind him.

Varric broke out in an involuntary shiver, and it wasn't from the cold. Aaron hadn't moved at all since Varric had spotted him, and there was no way he could have seen Varric approaching. That Aaron somehow knew it was him was more than a little creepy.

"Hi, Aaron. Am I disturbing you?" Varric asked.

Aaron turned to look at him. "No. I was just lost in thought."

The kid was a lot more introspective than Varric had been at twenty, that's for damned sure. That probably came with the years of total isolation in the Deep Roads.

"I've got a question for you," Varric said casually. "You said earlier you could track down your halberd and be waiting for us at the Imperial Highway by the time we got there on horseback. It's just a guess, but I'm assuming that's related to how you somehow appear and disappear?"

Aaron inclined his head affirmatively. "Yes. Was that your question?"

"Uh, no, not exactly. I was wondering, could you find where Solas went?" Varric asked.

Aaron looked back out over the lake. "I could. But I won't. Lothak was stolen from me. But the evidence indicates that Solas _chose_ to leave. He is not my property, nor the Inquisition's. I have no right to foil his escape, just to try to convince him to stay. And I _certainly_ have no right to forcibly conscript him, nor would I try even if I had that power."

Varric smiled thinly, encouraged that Aaron seemed to hold such principles in high regard. "Yeah, it might be easier if the Inquisition could conscript people like the Grey Wardens... but then again, that might just make things a whole lot harder. I can see why feel that way. Still, it bothers me. He didn't even leave a damn note. You must have it even worse. Being forced to wait here and not look for your halberd must be killing you. I'm sorry."

Aaron nodded. "It was an outside chance, honestly. We only discovered it was missing this morning, but Lothak has probably been gone from the armory for several days, which is at the very limit of even _my_ ability to track. I was... hoping, depending on the robbery being more recent. It was foolish. I should know better than to let my wishes cloud my judgement. I ought to plan for the worst case, so it doesn't catch me unawares. I knew all that in _theory,_ but to actually practice it is... another matter entirely. I knew _that,_ too, yet still I made the mistake. Pitiful, isn't it?"

Varric blew out a breath. "Well. I wouldn't know about that. But I do think it's time for us to find the Seeker and set off for the Hinterlands. There are people there that could really use _your_ help, Fluffy. And I think it would do us all some good if we work together to save them."

Aaron held up his marked hand, the clawlike gauntlet shining in the sunlight. "There's nowhere to go but forward," he said distantly, as if talking to himself. Then he looked back to Varric. "We must go on, with or without Solas. But before we do, there is something I need to tell you and Seeker Cassandra. I need to... start planning for the worst case, before it strikes. Go get her and the mounts, and meet me at the ruined archway on the eastern road."

Varric's heart skipped a beat. Holy shit, was this _it?_ Was Aaron finally going to spill his secrets to them?

Varric stammered out an affirmative, and nearly bolted from the pier in his haste to find Cassandra. Maker's breath, he needed to do this quickly, before Aaron got the chance to change his mind.

* * *

After getting his gear and finding Cassandra not far inside the Haven gates, Aaron had already vanished when they came back out to go to the stables. The new guard on rotation for the gate had seen Aaron on the pier but hadn't seen him leave, because _of course_ she didn't. Casssandra didn't waste any more time before dragging Varric to the stables.

Once again, Varric was reminded of how much he disliked horses, even the tired, docile old nags the Inquisition had scrounged up on short notice. Dwarves and horses just didn't mix. Sure, he _could_ ride, but it was only because he hated walking long distances only slightly more than riding on horseback.

Cassandra became so impatient with him as he struggled with human-proportioned straps to get himself up in the gray horse's saddle, she lifted him up under his armpits like a child and deposited him on top. It was humiliating, but also kind of impressive. What the hell did they feed Seekers, anyway? Varric wasn't exactly a featherweight.

As soon as they were ready, Varric was following Cassandra as they rode out of Haven. She drove her spotted brown horse to a fast canter, just short of a gallop. Varric couldn't quite coax the same effort out of the gray horse, so he just kept up as best he could.

The stone arch was further from the village than Varric had remembered, and yet there was still no sign of Aaron along the road as they rode.

As urgent as their departure from Haven was, Varric couldn't help but feel an excited sort of hope rising up in him. The cynical voice in his head, which sounded a lot like Fenris today, was telling him that Aaron was probably going to reveal something terrible, or nothing important at all, but it couldn't pierce Varric's optimism. Maybe he just needed something to feel good about after Solas' desertion. Or maybe it was because Aaron sharing confidences was a sign of significant progress, which also happened to be a great way to build bonds in this nascent little group. Or maybe Varric was just excited at the prospect of finally having his curiosity satisfied.

Varric only hoped Cassandra didn't decide to ruin it. Templars and Seekers were just so _jumpy_ around incredibly secretive apostates with inexplicable and terrifying powers.

When at last the arch came within sight, Aaron was standing exactly in the middle before it, surrounded by the still-undisturbed snow from last night's fall. Even after witnessing Aaron disappearing at the Breach with his own eyes, this display of Aaron's apparent teleportation abilities still made Varric's skin prickle. Magic just wasn't supposed to be able to _do_ that.

Aaron held out his unmarked hand in greeting. "Hello Varric, Cassandra. I have watched your progress. We are alone here, for the moment."

"What is it you wanted to tell us?!" Cassandra demanded. Straight to the point, as always.

Aaron clasped his hands in front of him. "It's about the powers I have demonstrated. But before I tell you... I would like you to know that if this secret became widely known, I would be severely impaired, and possibly even harmed as a result. I'm _trusting_ you both with this knowledge. And _only_ you. I don't want to extend my trust to everyone _you_ trust with my secret, and everyone _they_ trust, because then my secret is as good as out. I won't ask you to swear not to tell anyone, but I do ask in return that you to keep it to yourselves, unless it becomes _absolutely necessary_ to tell someone else. Is that fair?"

Varric could practically hear Cassandra's teeth grinding as Aaron slowly, deliberately enunciated his way through that somewhat rehearsed-sounding speech, but she managed to rein in her temper and give a serious nod in response.

"I know how to keep a secret, Fluffy. The trick is not to tell anyone." Varric said, tapping the side of his nose with a smile.

"I know, which is why this is hard for me to do. It still feels like I'm making a terrible mistake in confiding this to you," Aaron said, with the slightest hint of a wry tone. "I have no illusions that this will remain secret forever, but I do want to keep my abilities at an advantage for as long as possible. You see... I was not always a scholar."

Varric just barely caught Cassandra sarcastically mutter "Shocking."

If Aaron heard that, he didn't show it. "Before and since I started my studies, I have used my magical abilities to perform a very specific _role_. My whole life was defined by that role. My true talent is not in academics, or combat, or even magic. I am, first and foremost, a _Watcher_. I am one of the greatest scouts and trackers alive, and that is... _primarily_ because... I have the ability to shapeshift into different forms."

Varric had about half a second to wrap his head around this revelation before he stumbled on a note of confusion. Cassandra was faster on the uptake, and asked him about the very question that popped into Varric's mind.

"But you didn't change into something else. You _disappeared_ before, at the Breach!" she said, growing more accusing with every word.

Aaron held up a long finger, and just for a moment he seemed like a professor correcting a belligerent student. "Not so. I actually transformed into a flying swarm of insects. In that case, an exceedingly small one, because of my depleted mana at the time. I also move _very_ fast in that state, so I'm not surprised you didn't see me."

Cassandra's eyes widened in sudden shock. "That _buzzing!_ I _heard_ it, right before the very first time we met! I've _fought_ shape-changers before, I cannot _believe_ I didn't realize you were one before now!"

Aaron tilted his head slightly. "You should give yourself more credit, Seeker Cassandra. You put that connection together quite quickly, and it's a well-known bias that everything seems more obvious with the benefit of hindsight."

"So what does this _mean,_ exactly?" Varric asked. "Why is your shapeshifting such a big secret?"

"Several reasons," Aaron said, counting off on his fingers. "First, keeping my capabilities secret is vital to my ability to track people undetected, and even fight effectively, because surprise is one of the most effective strategies there is. Second, according to your Chantry, shapeshifting is a forbidden practice, alongside blood magic—and I'll reiterate I _don't_ know how to use that—but that still _technically_ means that I am a maleficar."

Cassandra went rigid at the word _maleficar._ Varric guessed she hadn't heard many people openly confess to being one of those without then trying to kill her. It was pretty understandable reaction, really. Varric didn't really know _what_ to think just yet—he'd actually been friends with apostates, maleficarum, and even an abomination before. Long story short, it hadn't exactly worked out most of the time. Even so, Varric got the feeling Aaron was far closer to the Bethany end of the temperament scale than the Anders end. At least, he hoped like hell that was the case. Then again, Merrill had proved that kindness and good intentions meant absolutely nothing when it came to using dark magic.

"And third," Aaron continued, oblivious to their reactions, "I didn't trust the Inquisition, and I wanted a means to escape if necessary. I _still_ don't completely trust the Inquisition, but we are going to go into battle, and our lives will be in each others' hands. So many things can go wrong. I _must_ trust you two, if no one else."

Varric nodded. "Makes sense. I don't want to accidentally shoot you if you suddenly decide to turn into a wolf, or something."

"Or something," Aaron hedged. Varric got the impression that Aaron was avoiding the topic of what exactly his personal menagerie consisted of. Kid sure liked to play his cards close to his chest, not that there was anything wrong with that.

"So, if you are a shape-changer, then who trained you? Who _are_ you, really?" Cassandra asked, a hungry gleam in her eye.

Varric had to force himself not to slap his forehead in exasperation. That was _not_ the right thing to ask the kid in this situation. He was deliberately making himself vulnerable, and he needed reciprocation and friendship, not further interrogation. Cassandra truly had all the emotional intuition and people skills of a rampaging wyvern.

"I... I can't say." Aaron said, looking like he very badly wanted to flee. "Look, this is going much better than I feared. That's why it's hard for me to even _contemplate_ ruining this good start by saying too much. I know you two aren't idiots, and I _know_ that my history and appearance must seem blatantly suspicious, but... it's a long story, and one I'm not prepared to tell. You can safely assume it's _bad_ and leave it at that."

Holy shit. Apparently Fluffy defaulted to brutal honesty when pressed.

Cassandra didn't even seem angry anymore. She was just staring at him intently, that little wrinkle forming between her eyebrows. "I am good at listening to long stories. You can ask Varric about it. I would be willing to hear you out, and I promise not to judge until I heard the whole story from you." she said, sounding both intent and sincere.

Aaron wrung his spidery hands together. "If I told you before... before I had a chance to establish that _I'm not evil,_ you'd never believe me, and it would end very, very badly. Sister Leliana only believed me because she already knew _some_ of it, and she'd seen evidence which I can't reproduce for you. _She_ would be the one to ask, not me. My account would obviously be biased. Untrustworthy."

"Don't worry, Fluffy. I think you deserve the benefit of the doubt," Varric said quickly, before Cassandra could put her foot in her mouth again. "You're _here,_ helping us. We're grateful you shared this secret with us. And hey, it turns out you had really good reasons to keep it to yourself! In the end, it wasn't even that bad of a secret. I mean, so what if you can turn into bugs? It's not the end of the world."

At that, Cassandra barked out a laugh, which rapidly devolved into howling fit of laughter. Varric and Aaron both stared at her in increasing awkwardness as she leaned against the horn of her saddle for support and uncharacteristically laughed herself silly. It was a rich, joyful laugh, and it seemed to catch no one more off guard than Cassandra herself.

Aaron and Varric exchanged a look. Varric hadn't said anything _that_ funny.

Cassandra's laughter died down unevenly as she fought to speak. "A-and to think, I tho- _ha-ha_ -ught you were hiding blood magic, or some sort of apocalyptic power! _Hah ha ha!_ Shapeshifting is weaker than almost _every other school of magic,_ except h-h-healing! And you don't even turn into anything _fearsome,_ you turn into tiny little _bugs!"_

Aaron went a bit straighter at Cassandra's derision. "I'll thank you not to impugn my abilities until you've seen what I can do with them."

Cassandra's laughing descended into a few fitful giggles, and she waved a hand. "I'm sorry. _Hehe_... I'm sorry. It's just, these last few days... here we are, at the _end of the world,_ and I never expected to find something funny in all this darkness."

"Oh. It's fine," Aaron said, suddenly sounding a lot less offended. "Though I fail to see the joke."

"Hey, if you can't laugh when the world's gone to hell, you'll never be able to laugh at all!" Varric said cheerily, and by unspoken agreement, they set off, with hardly a trace of the earlier tension that had been between them.

 **A/N**

You have no idea how difficult it was not to leave this chapter on a cliffhanger, as I'd originally intended. I'd like to thank my reviewers for continuing to inspire me with excellent ideas and speculations. They help me create more and better content! Be sure to leave a review with your guesses as to more plot details, or just to tell me how you think I'm doing as a writer. I will continue to reward correct guesses and well-reasoned theories in the form of requests for additional content and/or plot details. Surprise me enough and I might even write up a whole interlude chapter based on something you'd like to see explored in more detail!


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

* * *

The Imperial Highway would have been the most spectacular piece of infrastructure Aaron had ever seen, had he not spent the last decade exploring the Deep Roads. Even in its current state of disrepair, the elevated road still cut unnaturally, unerringly through the landscape, remaining perfectly level despite the rolling hills below. Parts were clearly still standing only by dint of the magic used in their construction. From far above, it looked like a great pale blade that bisected the land.

The best thing about the surface, Aaron reflected, was that there was no limit to how high he could fly. Aaron observed the dense, autumnal forest through the kaleidoscopic vision of thousands of individual eyes. His decentralized body flowed through the air as a dense swarm of black, blighted wasps, spiraling through the great Tevinter pillars above the mounted forms of Cassandra and Varric. It had taken most of the day to descend from the mountains and reach the Highway, but now that they had, their collective speed had increased tremendously. It was nothing compared to the distance Aaron could cover if he pushed himself, but Aaron didn't particularly mind. Waiting on his escort gave him plenty of time to think.

The Surface was truly a vast, majestic place. He had only spent a little time on the Surface during the war in Amaranthine. He had gone about mostly at night, for the Surface was no place for a darkspawn, not even one with free will. At the time, he'd been mostly preoccupied with tracking the Warden-Commander and reporting back to the Mother. It was only now that he was able to truly appreciate the stunning beauty of the Surface, and interact with its strange inhabitants.

Aaron's earlier conversation with Varric and Cassandra had gone quite well, he thought, though he was still unnerved by the unpredictable outcomes and rapid pace of speaking with them. For too long, he had been a passive observer, watching the Memories, and before that, he had obeyed the Mother in all things as a substitute for the Song of the Old Gods. Aaron liked to think he had enough self-awareness to realize that this had put him at a disadvantage.

At least things hadn't turned out as badly as he had feared. With his true nature now known to Sister Leliana and his shapeshifting known to Varric and Cassandra with little negative consequence, Aaron felt a sense of peace come over him that he had been lacking for the past week.

That is, until a Fade rift appeared in the distance.

Aaron banked on thousands of pairs of black wings, all the pieces of himself cascading down before the advancing horses of Varric and Cassandra. They pulled back on the reins, urging their horses to a stop. Aaron's swarm briefly formed a silhouette like his body before he released his hold on the form, allowing his true body to reassert itself with a flash of golden light. The change was so smooth and practiced that he didn't even stumble as his full weight settled on his feet.

Varric and Cassandra's horses did not like this development one bit, and they skittered back a few paces from him.

"What is it?" Cassandra called out.

"Fade rift," Aaron said in a neutral tone. "Straight ahead, perhaps half a mile. It's at the base of an embankment on the south side of the Highway. We may have to detour around it."

Cassandra's brows knit together. "Detour? What are you talking about? You need to destroy it."

Aaron cocked his head in confusion. Surely she didn't think he could destroy rifts from such a distance? Actually, Aaron had never tested that empirically. He mentally chided himself for making such assumptions, and looked closely at the mark. It seemed to be dormant, glowing a placid green with nary a spark in sight. No power coursed through it as it did when he came within close range of a rift. The mark's feeling of prickly numbness barely felt there anymore unless he paid attention to it, like a ring that had been worn so long that its absence was felt more strongly than its presence.

Aaron held out his left hand experimentally in the rough direction of the rift and willed a portion of his mana into his mark, or at least the part of his palm that he associated with the mark. After a few seconds, nothing had happened.

"What are you _doing,_ Fluffy?" Varric asked incredulously.

"Attempting to use my mark," Aaron said, lowering his arm. "Honestly, this feels futile. I don't think I can affect rifts unless I'm right next to them."

Cassandra dismounted from her horse, took a moment to stretch, and started leading the horse forward. "That isn't a bad thought, but we already know what works. Let us go defeat the demons and be done with it."

"What?" Aaron blurted, staring at her in shock. "You—but we're—there's only _three_ of us!"

Cassandra raised a skeptical eyebrow at him. "Yes. And sealing rifts is what we are here to _do_. Is that a problem?"

Aaron paused, biting back his first few responses. He took a deep breath. "Yes, that _does_ present a problem. I _assumed_ that you two would be escorting me to this Mother Giselle, not that we would be expected to fight hordes of demons with no Inquisition reinforcements whatsoever."

Cassandra scoffed. "We could barely scrape together the resources to scout ahead and establish a forward camp in the Hinterlands, and it hardly takes a battalion of soldiers to pacify one single rift. It's the _number_ of them that's concerning, hence the urgency of destroying _every one we find_ as soon as possible."

Not for the first time, Aaron was annoyed that the armor he wore did not allow him to rub his temples when he became frustrated. "I'm not saying... Let me start over. This isn't a matter of prowess or courage, it's a matter of strategy. I am—or, more accurately, the _mark_ is the only thing in the known world that can seal these Fade rifts. There is _zero_ margin of error. If I am struck down by a lucky blow from some demon, if we few are overwhelmed in battle, the consequences for the world would be unthinkable. You have to weigh the costs against the benefits—the positive outcome of our little trio sealing a single rift is _simply not justified_ when weighed against even a small probability of losing the entire world."

Varric stroked his chin thoughtfully from atop his horse. "He has a point, Seeker. We've seen the nasties that can come out of these things. It might not be worth the risk to go after all the little ones before we use him against the Breach."

"And _I_ have seen what carnage is wrought when demons are allowed free reign," Cassandra said icily. "Your justifications for inaction seem all the more lofty and righteous when you do not have to bear witness to the consequences. If you two will not do anything, then I shall."

Aaron's guts felt like they had turned to ice. Cassandra's words had cut straight to Aaron's own private fears, the nagging suspicion in the back of his mind that his logic for avoiding the rifts was being swayed by selfishness and cowardice. "I... I don't think you're wrong about that. I don't want to sound like I'm endorsing apathy. But taking unilateral action is _also_ wrong, even if your death doesn't carry the same potential for catastrophic consequences. Not to say that your life is inconsequential, but—"

Cassandra waved her hand dismissively. "I swore to uphold the ideals of the Chantry and the Seekers of Truth. I draw _power_ from that conviction. With that comes the responsibility to _act_ upon the power I am granted, lest I _lose_ it."

That certainly put things in a different light. Aaron wondered just how literal she was being. Did the powers of Templars and Seekers truly atrophy in such a way? It was a fascinating thought, if true, and held rather uncomfortable implications about their behavior.

"If one of us goes, we all have to go," Varric said, joining Cassandra in dismounting. "No matter how badass your crazy demon-slaying powers are, someone has to watch your back, Seeker. And if Fluffy doesn't come with us to close the rift, then it'll just keep throwing demons at us forever."

Aaron sighed. If this was what the phenomenon of 'group conformity' was like, he suddenly understood why so many people had difficulty resisting it. For some irrational reason, the nearly certain prospect of disappointing his new companions seemed to take precedence in his mind over the distinct possibility of losing his life and ending the world, which made _no sense whatsoever_.

"I will go," he said at last. "But first, I _insist_ that we go into this prepared. We need to discuss tactics. Who will be leading us? Varric?"

The dwarf suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "Oh, uh, giving orders isn't really my forte, Fluffy. I get too focused on trying to shoot the bad guys, and trying _not_ to shoot the good guys."

"It is my duty to protect you, Ser Aaron. I will follow your lead." Cassandra said, her voice resolute.

Aaron looked from one to the other, desperately wishing that one of them would take this responsibility from him. "I was a _scout,_ not a general. I tracked, sabotaged, and ambushed. That is the extent of my combat experience. I've never led others in battle directly. I have a _theoretical_ knowledge of how ancient dwarven legionnaires are commanded, and that is all. You _can't_ expect me to lead."

"You will learn," Cassandra said, and a wry smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "There are _three_ of us, Ser Aaron. You are hardly being expected to command an army. Much as I wish we _had_ one."

"...Fine." Aaron said, taking his staff off his back. It felt like a thin, flimsy twig in his hands compared to Lothak's heft, and the enchantments felt similarly lacking. If he was being honest with himself, he _was_ afraid. Facing a Pride demon five times his size would do that. Subsequently losing a sparring match to a human female only half his size had done little to improve Aaron's confidence. "If something goes wrong, if the demons are too powerful or too numerous, we retreat. I will change shape if I need to escape. Cassandra, you are our expert on fighting demons. Do you know if it is better for all of us to concentrate on killing each demon successively, or engaging them all at once?"

Cassandra furrowed her brow in thought for a few moments. "It depends. For a small group like ours, though, it is generally better to stay close and join efforts to defeating one demon at a time. At least, that is how it has been in my experience."

Aaron nodded, but the thought gave him pause. Staying close meant that if he were struck a serious wound, they might see that his blood was black and tainted, or worse, become infected by it. At least his silverite armor and naturally thick hide helped mitigate that risk. He had more to fear from broken bones and dislocated limbs. If it did happen, though, Aaron decided that transforming immediately would be the best policy in any case, as it would hide the wound and also help him escape.

There was no predicting what might happen in a battle, though. Dunammar's Memories were _quite_ clear on that particular point. Aaron would just have to see what happened, and adapt accordingly.

"Let's go." Aaron said, taking the lead.

* * *

The sun was beginning to set when they had reached the Fade rift. They had left the horses on the Imperial Highway, reasoning that very few potential horse-thieves would be on the Highway heading _towards_ Haven and the giant demonic hole in the sky.

They descended from the Highway on one of the regularly-placed access stairways—most of which led to absolutely nothing except centuries' worth of abandoned campfires and improvised privies used by people who had bedded down for the night while traveling the Highway. This section was so remote, however, that the leaf-strewn stairs simply terminated on the side of a wild, forested hill. There was barely a trail.

At the base of the hill was a broad, rocky streambed. Perhaps a foot of clear water ran over the smooth tan and gray stones. Hanging in the air above the stream, partially enclosed by the dusky canopy of trees on both sides, was a tear in the fabric of the world. It gave Aaron chills to watch as the green, crystalline structures punctured the nothingness with a shrill, percussive sound, only to grind away and recede again before being replaced by another. It was otherworldly and oddly hypnotic to watch.

"Do you see any demons?" Aaron asked in a low whisper, despite the fact that the rift still lay at least thirty yards away.

"We're clear," Varric replied, just as softly. He carried his crossbow loosely in his hands, aiming it at nothing in particular.

Aaron let out a breath he'd been holding. Now that things were less urgent, Aaron wanted to convince Varric and Cassandra to undergo a bit of observation and experimentation. He hadn't exactly been in a fit state to experiment with the prior rifts he'd faced, but if he failed to do so here in a more controlled setting, he may as well give up his self-proclaimed scholarly mantle.

"As it stands, we know nothing of this mark," Aaron said, turning his hand up to look at the scar of light on his palm. "We should take this opportunity to investigate it, and how the rifts work."

Cassandra dipped her head in acquiescence, and Varric grinned.

"What do you have in mind?" he asked.

"I noticed the mark and the rifts react to one another when I get close enough to one, without my conscious control," said Aaron. "It might be useful to figure out how far that is, and whether the distance varies significantly. We should also keep track of how long it takes for me to seal each rift, and whether the mark seems to be getting weaker the more I use it."

Varric and Cassandra exchanged looks of alarm.

"You're saying it might be getting _weaker?!"_ Cassandra hissed. "Is it going away?!"

Aaron shook his head. "I don't know. We should try to figure out whether it is, though. The mark doesn't seem to come from me or my magic, so its power to seal rifts may well be drawn from a finite supply. If that's the case, we need to figure out a way to replenish its energy, or keep it in reserve for the Breach. Varric, it would be helpful if you used your journal to record the data we gather."

"You've put some thought into this," Varric said appreciatively.

"Perhaps not enough," Cassandra said sharply. "Suppose the mark is more like... A muscle? If you do not use it, it might atrophy. You should try strengthening your mark on the smaller rifts, so that you can destroy the Breach next time."

"Or it could be something else entirely," Aaron said equably. "There's no way to know until we test it."

"Be careful about making assumptions," said Varric. "That thing's connected to the Fade somehow. Maybe it works however you _think_ it will work."

Aaron did a double-take. That... would entirely obviate the point of experimentation, if it were true. The experimental method could not separate the bias from the reality if the reality was _created_ by the bias, as it was in the Fade.

" _Antek nal segerra,"_ Aaron swore venomously. "I should have considered that. _I'm_ the mage, here, and you are the dwarf. How in the world did you catch that?"

Varric chuckled. "Believe it or not, I've actually seen the Fade before. Probably one of the only dwarves who ever has. I've been ass-deep in this kind of weirdness since before you were born."

Varric's words were oddly reassuring. Aaron wanted to believe there was _someone_ here who knew what they were doing, because he certainly didn't.

"Enough nattering. Let's go seal the rift." Cassandra said, straightening from her half-crouch and cautiously moving out into the relative openness of the stream bank.

Aaron and Varric exchanged a nod and followed after her.

* * *

It was about fifty feet from the rift before Aaron's mark sparked to life, crackling with energy that was intense yet not quite painful. The rift convulsed in midair, but surprisingly, it did not yield any demons.

Aaron felt a chill run down his spine.

"Something is wrong," Aaron said.

"Can you use the mark?" Cassandra asked.

Aaron held up his hand, willing the Fade rift to close. The _resonance,_ for lack of a better word, seemed to take hold, and in an instant, a connection was established. Sparking yellow arcs of energy bridged the mark and the rift, and with a keening sound, the rift destabilized and changed shape, the crystals shattering and giving way to an eerie, opaque veil of green light. For a long moment, nothing more happened.

Then, off in the distance, Aaron heard a high scream. He twisted around to try to pinpoint the source of the noise.

"Do you hear that?" Varric asked, scanning down Bianca's sights.

"Probably human. Female." Aaron said, suddenly rooted with indecision. Did they stay here to try to seal the rift, or try to rescue the female?

As soon as his mind formulated the choice, he started moving towards the source of the scream. Cassandra's words from earlier echoed in his mind. It _was_ different when someone was in danger right before you, and you had the capacity to stop it.

Aaron, Varric, and Cassandra ran through the shallow stream, the freezing meltwater splashing up around them. On the opposite bank and past a bend was a trail leading into the woods, which had recently seen a major disturbance. Dirt was scraped away and branches had been broken over a very broad swath.

Just a few dozen feet away, the trail led to a low, one-room cabin with an attached smokehouse, nestled amongst a tall grove of evergreens. Wisps of pale smoke curled from the stone chimney, and from the tiny windows Aaron could see firelight. Everything seemed rather cheery and normal, actually.

As they approached, sounds of laughter could be heard inside. The front door of the dwelling opened wide, and a smiling, thin, bearded human stood in the doorway. He looked Fereldan, wearing heavy furs and tools in the style of a hunter. He had an unstrung bow strapped to his back.

"Ho, there, travelers!" the hunter called out, holding up a hand in greeting.

Aaron was so surprised by this that he momentarily forgot why they were there. He cleared his throat.

"Did you hear someone... scream just now?" Aaron asked awkwardly.

The man grinned. "Oh, you heard that? You're too kind to rush over. Yes, that was my wife. She knocked the roast off the table!"

At the woodsman's booming laugh, everyone relaxed.

"We thought something might have come through that Fade rift," Cassandra said, chuckling as if the very thought was preposterous in hindsight.

"Why don't you come on in, friends?" the hunter said warmly. "My wife's roast is still the best, even after it's been on the floor!"

"I think I'll take you up on that. I'm starving," Varric said. "Got any ale, by chance?"

"Of course!" said the hunter, turning to address someone in the house. "Gwen, dear, we have three more dinner guests!"

"Thank the Maker. I could eat a horse," Cassandra muttered.

Aaron felt a sudden pang of hunger, too. That was somewhat odd. Darkspawn were sustained by the magic of the Blight, and ever since he had undergone his final molt and emerged as a fully-grown hurlock, he didn't _need_ to eat at all, nor particularly feel hunger. That hadn't changed, even after the Awakening made him less like a darkspawn and more like a Grey Warden. Still, it wasn't like eating would _harm_ him in any way. And these humans were being so friendly, wouldn't it be rude to refuse them? It would be an insult to Gwen's cooking, and that was unacceptable.

"Come, let's eat," Aaron said eagerly.

As the three of them walked up to the cabin, Aaron caught a familiar scent on the air.

Someone was cooking human flesh.

 _Oh, good,_ Aaron thought as a pleasant fog descended over his mind. _It will be just like when I was small_.

Aaron stepped past the threshold and went around Cassandra, who was seemingly frozen in place for some reason, and was a little surprised at what he found inside the cabin.

A skinny, red-haired human woman was busily tending a large fire, over which the parts of a small human slowly turned on a spit. The place was certainly warm, cozy, and full of delicious aromas—but it was more than a little cramped. Most of the furniture had been crammed over to the left side of the house. Apparently, they weren't the only guests this couple had for the evening.

Towering above the long wooden table which held an entire half-eaten roasted mabari, there was a vast expanse of grayish-pink flesh that dominated half the cabin. At first, Aaron thought the other guest was a broodmother—how nostalgic!—but it was not. The Guest had a rather odd face, or a rather odd _lack_ of a face, instead possessing a huge five-parted mouth that opened like the petals of a flower. Instead of sitting at one of the little wooden chairs, which were obviously far too small, the Guest's bloated stomach was perched on an asymmetrical tangle of human-looking arms and legs that seemed to have too many joints. A larger pair of arms with three elbows too many came out near the head, but the Guest didn't really have shoulders, as such. Aaron wondered how someone as big as the Guest had even gotten into the cabin in the first place.

He—or was it a she?—spread their arms wide in greeting, the curtains of fat nearly brushing the table.

"I... am Gluttony," they said with a voice like a great, heaving sigh. "Welcome... to my _feast_."

* * *

 **A/N**

In which our heroes just can't seem to catch a break. This chapter was inspired by what I believe to be one of the most terrifying parts of _Dragon Age: Origins,_ the fact that very powerful demons could essentially shut down people's rational minds. As always, reviews are much appreciated! I'd like to hear when exactly you figured out that a hunger demon was influencing their minds.

As a side note, if some of Aaron's internal dialogue about not needing to eat and molting seems a bit strange, that isn't actually the demon's influence scrambling his brain. In canon, darkspawn are literally born as voracious, centipede-like grubs, and the Blight ensures that darkspawn and most ghouls are incapable of starving. Since broodmothers are the canonical exception to this rule and need to eat in order to produce more darkspawn, my own headcanon is that darkspawn hatchlings need to eat to attain their adult size, and they eat the same thing broodmothers do, namely people, ghouls, and other darkspawn.


	12. One Step Ahead Chapter 11

One Step Ahead Chapter 11

* * *

Cassandra couldn't move.

It felt like her mind had been split into two conflicting halves. Part of her was certain that something here wasn't right, but she was too happy and too... was she feeling _drunk?_ How did that happen? She couldn't remember drinking anything.

The logical part of her _knew_ something was wrong here, but she was too warm, happy, and contented to actually care. Yet that feeling itself set off a discordant note of alarm, some instinctual dread...

Cassandra's mind whirled around and around in this fashion as she stood in a stupor, twitching and swaying slightly. The pungent smell of smoke and roasted meat overpowered her nose and coated her tongue, and her eyelids were getting heavy as the room seemed to spin dizzily.

The demon—Gluttony, as it introduced itself—was speaking again. Cassandra tried to focus on making the nonsensical sounds which evaded her understanding resolve into actual words.

"How serendipitous… that I should welcome… not just a _mage,_ but a perfect vessel… just as the pickings here had become… decidedly _slim,_ of late." Gluttony said with a smooth, ponderous cadence.

Recognition dawned in Cassandra's foggy, disoriented mind, as it latched onto the word _vessel_. Gluttony wanted to possess Aaron. But if Gluttony did that...

The sudden panic finally spurred her into movement. Driven more by ingrained training than any conscious choice, Cassandra drew her sword.

Gluttony reacted with incongruous speed. It spread its inhumanly long, many-jointed arms wide, and Cassandra felt a sharp spike of hunger so intense it made her double over like she had been stabbed. She had never been so ravenous, never even _imagined_ such hunger. Her prior inebriated stupor evaporated completely as she was overcome by the throes of starvation.

 _Pain. Panic. Terror._

Through the agony, the only thought going through her mind was the overwhelming certainty that she was about to die. Her burning need to eat something, _anything,_ was so primal, so intense, it was like the need to gasp for air when _drowning_.

Cassandra's vision seemed to black out at the edges, narrowing to a razor-sharp focus. Eat. _Survive_. Whatever it took. She couldn't afford to let anyone else take _anything_. She had to have it all to herself, or she would _die_.

Suddenly, she became keenly aware of Varric, Aaron, and the married couple. Before, they might as well have been furniture. But now, they were a threat. They would try to take her food. _Her food!_ They would eat it all themselves unless she got it first!

Just as she was about to lunge for the roasted mabari on the table, determined to eat as much as she possibly could, Gluttony's mouth parted wide, exposing mismatched rows of teeth embedded along its jaws, running all the way down its cavernous throat. Three thin, dark red tongues came lashing out of its mouth like whips, reaching out to the mabari carcass and pulling it into Gluttony's mouth. It bit down with a great crunch, devouring the pony-sized hound in one bite like it was nothing more than an Orlesian bunting. Red runnels of juice and blood escaped from between Gluttony's jaws and ran down its rolls of fat as it swallowed the mabari, only for the jaws and pale flesh to be scoured clean by the tongues a moment later.

Cassandra's frantic hunger began to ebb as the spell over her was somehow diminished, and her mind and body were overcome by a leaden fatigue instead. She and Varric both slumped to the ground, overcome by their own weight. It was a feeling unlike Cassandra had ever felt before, an almost nauseated torpor, as if she had eaten so much so quickly that she couldn't even move. Aaron still stood, seemingly unaffected.

"Ah, ah, ah... Manners..." Gluttony tutted at them. "As I am the one hosting this feast... So none of my new guests may eat... Until I have served myself..." the demon said, a gleeful note entering its breathy voice. The lobes of the creature's jaws shuddered unevenly as it let out a choking sound, sending its jowls rippling, and Cassandra belatedly realized it was laughing.

"Once again... It seems our dear cook... neglected to prepare enough! Ah, well... there's always the next course…" Gluttony bellowed its laughter, pausing only to belch thunderously.

Gluttony folded its arms over its stomach, sighing contentedly. "I'm so pleased... More guests have arrived... I was worried… that after a few more days... We'd run out of courses to eat... Or that our dear hunter and cook would starve… But now… there's _fresh meat."_

Though Gluttony had no eyes, nor even a true face, Cassandra somehow knew that it was looking at her and Varric in turn. In some lonely corner of Cassandra's mind, the horrific realization was dawning that Gluttony was going to eat them.

Gluttony's head turned and it seemingly examined Aaron more closely. "And what _strange_ meat it is... You are the one that… _interrupted_ my feast… by attacking the rift… Poor Elaine broke from my control... And saw what she did to sweet little Deirdre there... But how fortunate that her scream... Led you here."

Cassandra's tired mind was jolted by the realization of what Gluttony was referring to. She had never wanted to avoid looking at anything so much in her entire life when she finally registered what _exactly_ was cooking over the fire behind her. The knowledge of what she would see if she looked over there prickled at the back of her neck, as if it were a centipede crawling over her skin. Her heart started hammering, slowly and painfully, like she was stuck in a nightmare and had forgotten to breathe.

"But do not worry… All is forgiven… For I see you understand… quite well… the struggle to _survive."_ Gluttony said, its tone taking on an odd, triumphant intensity.

"I never had a choice," Aaron said, his voice strained, like his breath was being forced from his lungs by a great weight. "I… Don't…"

"Come now," Gluttony goaded. "Don't deny it, _beast_... You _yearn_ to surrender to primal pleasures… Like before... You can have that once again… Give yourself over to me… We can hunt, feast, and grow strong together… Swallowed in _ecstasy."_

Aaron seemed to be at war with himself, trembling and twitching. His clawed silverite gauntlets gripped at his helmeted head, like he was afraid it was going to split apart.

"No," Aaron rasped. "What I lost—it's gone. Forever. You can't bring it back. We tried everything. _Everything_. You cannot give what you do not have. Your offer is meaningless."

Gluttony shifted, its many limbs contorting in agitation. " _Nothing_ has more meaning than this: you will _eat,_ or you will be _eaten_... All creatures do what they must to survive... The strong take what they want from the weak... _That_ is the supreme law shared by your world, and mine."

There was a long pause, and Aaron's convulsions grew worse.

"No," Aaron said shakily.

Just like that, the spell was broken. _Reality_ crashed back down on Cassandra's blurry mind, returning everything around her to sheer, horrifying clarity. Her body broke free of the demon's torpor, and she rushed to get to her feet.

Cassandra could hardly believe she'd been in the thing's thrall for that long. The problem was, she hadn't _expected_ the demon. She'd let her guard down. Just for an instant, a moment of confusion when a human had answered the door, but that had been enough to let it worm its way into her. She would have ordinarily _sensed_ the wrongness around her, but with the Breach in the sky, _everything_ seemed like that.

But that was no excuse. The most powerful hunger demon she had ever encountered—or even _heard_ of—was right before her eyes, and it was _angry_.

Gluttony roared in outrage, and its many-jointed arms darted out. One caught Cassandra in the stomach, knocking her to the floor, and the other hit Aaron, sending him tumbling over the chair behind him.

Blinking the stars out of her eyes, Cassandra forced herself to focus on her own power, drawing forth her energy to call down the wrath of heaven.

A pillar of light seemed to materialize out of nowhere, striking Gluttony in the center of its mass. The demon flailed about and squealed horribly, its grayish-pink skin charred from the attack. Its limbs smashed the table to splinters, and knocked stones loose from the mantle, one of which caught Varric across the head before he could so much as unsling Bianca. He fell with a spurt of blood.

Cassandra took advantage of Gluttony's distraction to stand back up, despite the flashes of pain radiating from her abdomen. With a defiant cry, she raised her sword and brought it down on Gluttony's arm.

To her shock, the blade barely broke the demon's flabby skin, and in reflex, Gluttony threw her off with almost casual ease.

Cassandra stumbled back, only to be met with a sharp pain in her ribs just beneath her armpit.

Cassandra whirled around to see the slack face of Elaine, the hunter's wife, her eyes blank and lifeless. She had taken a kitchen knife and tried to stab through into Cassandra's chest, but had been stopped by her shirt of mail.

Cassandra delivered a hard bash with her shield to knock the ensorcelled woman away, only to see that her husband was standing in the corner and drawing back his longbow with an arrow nocked, aiming right for the injured and disoriented Varric.

In sheer panic, Cassandra did something she'd been trained to never do. She drew her arm back and threw her sword at the hunter, praying she would spoil his shot before he skewered Varric.

The sword tumbled through the air and clattered against the hunter's right arm. It didn't do any serious damage, but it made his shot go wild. The arrow flew past Varric and somehow missed Gluttony completely, lodging itself into the far wall with a loud thunk.

Aaron had clambered to his feet as this was happening, and drew his staff, holding it more like a spear and less like a magical implement. Gluttony's vast mouth parted like a red, hellish flower, and it screamed as it surged forwards on its many tangled limbs, trampling Varric under twisted arms and feet.

Aaron's staff surged with lightning as he braced and plunged the bladed tip into Gluttony's stomach, but Gluttony didn't seem to care even as the folds of its expansive stomach swallowed the spearhead entirely.

Gluttony grabbed Aaron with both arms and lifted him up, crashing his head against the ceiling's thick wooden rafters with a sickening crack before smashing him into the floor, where he lay in a limp heap.

 _"WEAK!_ YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN MY OFFER!" Gluttony bellowed.

Cassandra lunged forward, raising her shield to use as a weapon. She brought the edge down on one of the many joints in Gluttony's left arm, and she both felt and heard a snap, but the other arm backhanded her away. She bounced off the front doorframe and fell to the floor, knocking the breath from her completely.

Gluttony grabbed Aaron again, its right arm coiling around his torso like a segmented snake. Straining slightly, Gluttony lifted Aaron up to its mouth and spoke.

"You _will_ make me stronger… if not as a vessel, then as my _prey!"_ Gluttony hissed.

At that, Gluttony's three whiplike tongues flashed out of its mouth and seized Aaron, drawing him into its maw like they had the mabari.

Even as black spots danced in her vision and her chest simply refused to draw in air, Cassandra reached for her power in desperation, mustering anything she could to throw at the demon in an attempt to stop what was happening.

She could feel the frayed ends of her power, feel the attack struggle to manifest, it had been so soon after her opening strike, and she had never been able to call down a smite more than twice in a minute.

But Cassandra grasped at her power with single-minded determination, and the attack _did_ come, another pillar of light that struck Gluttony squarely, charring its flesh still further even as Aaron was left completely unaffected.

Gluttony didn't stop, however, and instead shook Aaron in its mouth like a dog worrying a rat, even as the demon grunted in pain. Gluttony's tongues pulled Aaron further and further down its throat, and Cassandra was at a complete loss as to what to do. She could no longer move, had no more strength of body nor strength of Seeker power.

Then, a golden flash momentarily blinded her, and with a thunderous crack of sound, Gluttony _exploded_.

The entire interior of the cabin was violently splattered with gore and chunks of flesh, as some hellish _creature_ tore itself out of Gluttony's destroyed body.

Cassandra belatedly realized that Aaron had shapeshifted into this form _inside Gluttony_.

Cassandra stared, gradually succeeding in her fight to breathe, but even as her mind returned from the brink of unconsciousness, she couldn't even begin to guess what in the world Aaron had turned into. She had never seen nor heard of such a thing before.

In shape and size, it was somewhat akin to a bear, with four strong legs and a barrel-chest, but that was where the semblance ended. Its incredibly thick, hairless pale skin overlapped in places to form plates of armor. It had a huge, nightmarish head which more closely resembled a ridged animal skull with a fringe of horns pointing in all directions, and it had uncanny, silver-colored eyes. It extricated itself fully from the demon just as the corpse began to dissolve into greenish-yellow motes of ash, vanishing completely in moments—though not without leaving a significant amount of blood and viscera behind, mainly in the form of a greenish, membranous residue on the floor underneath the creature Aaron had become.

As Gluttony's body vanished, Varric was freed from the tangle of limbs. He gave a shuddering gasp, then had a fit of wet coughing. His eyes were squeezed shut.

"Varric! Can you hear me? Are you all right?" Cassandra wheezed. She was only answered by more wet coughing and gagging, which grew progressively weaker.

Maker, had he punctured a lung? Cassandra pushed herself somewhat upright and made her way over to him—though it was more of a crawl than a limp—and surveyed the damage.

The gash on Varric's head had covered half his face in blood, but there was no telling how serious it was internally given how face wounds bled so profusely. Fortunately, she didn't even have to tear Varric's jacket open to get a good look at his chest, as Varric deliberately left it open to expose his so-called 'virile carpet of chest hair.' This allowed Cassandra to see right away the large, already-purplish bruise forming along the right side of his rib cage.

Cassandra fumblingly reached into her belt pouch, and managed to extricate two healing potions. She propped herself up on one knee and forced the first down Varric's throat, roughly pinching his lips around the vial's neck to prevent any spills. He gurgled and coughed more, but it went down, and a second later his eyes opened.

"Varric!" Cassandra called again.

Varric's eyes went to hers, and he blinked blearily. "…Yeah, Seeker. I'm half-dead, not deaf."

Cassandra pushed herself away, collapsing in a heap. If Varric was making jokes, he would be fine.

The creature Aaron had become loped past Cassandra and Varric, swaying somewhat drunkenly.

Varric startled and rubbed at his eyes. "I'm guessing, based on how it's not eating us, that the cretahl is Aaron? Huh. I thought..."

Varric trailed off. Aaron had stopped his halting shuffle at the fallen forms of the hunter and his wife, and nudged each of them in turn with his bony, ridged muzzle.

Neither were breathing.

Elaine, it seemed, had fallen on the knife that she—or the demon controlling her—had tried to use to stab Cassandra. Blood pooled around her. Looking at her husband, though, Cassandra thought she might have been dead even before she began bleeding out.

The hunter was… shrunken. Withered. The only injury he had sustained was the slight cut on his arm, but upon Gluttony's death, he had somehow become emaciated in a way that even his wife had not, though on second glance she, too, looked thinner. Perhaps that was why she screamed and he had not, when Aaron had temporarily disrupted Gluttony's control. He might have been too far gone already.

Cassandra turned away from the gruesome sight, and from the horror she knew she would behold if she looked but two feet to the right of the fallen hunter. She didn't want to see that. She _never_ wanted to see that, not at any time or in any state of mind. The girl. _Deirdre,_ Gluttony said her name had been.

Cassandra leaned away from Varric and vomited on the cabin floor. In that moment, she thanked the Maker that she could only smell her own bile and not Deirdre cooking over the fire.

Cassandra felt a hand on her back, and she looked up to see Varric standing over her. He looked much worse for wear, but there was a steely, serious air to him that she seldom got to see.

"Come on, Seeker. We need to get out of here." Varric said lowly.

Cassandra couldn't agree more, and she allowed herself to be pulled along by Varric, still clutching the other unused healing potion in her other hand.

In just four limping steps they had reached the door, yet Aaron showed no sign of noticing or following.

"Aaron," Varric said firmly. "It's time to leave. There's nothing we can do for them."

The animal—a cretahl, Varric had called it—twitched violently on hearing his name, but after a moment, he placidly shuffled out of the cabin behind them, his head bent low. He almost got stuck in the front doorframe, but with a creak and snap of splintering wood, he simply forced his way through.

They made it to the stream without a word passing between them—understandably so, in Aaron's case. But even had he been able to speak, Cassandra doubted he would have. There just seemed to be nothing to say.

With a mutual understanding, Varric and Cassandra stopped supporting each other to kneel at the stream bank and wash the worst of the blood and other substances from themselves. After drinking three handfuls of the stingingly cold water, Cassandra took the health potion, and her body immediately felt better.

Her mind, not so much.

Cassandra had been among the youngest Seekers ever inducted. She'd had a long and painful career, hunting down and confronting the worst corruptions imaginable, depraved acts of both demons _and_ men. Yet this was among the worst she had ever seen, if not in scope, then in sheer horror. She'd often come close to death, but that encounter had been very close indeed.

She looked over at Aaron, still in the monstrous form of the cretahl that he'd transformed into to kill Gluttony. He'd sustained a brutal head injury before he'd transformed, had it affected him even in this form?

"Aaron," Cassandra said gently. "Can you hear me? Do you understand?"

The cretahl's head turned to face her, but Cassandra got the feeling he couldn't see her at all with its tiny, milky white eyes. Slowly, the creature's head dipped in what she hoped was a nod.

"Can you change back? Or will that exacerbate your injuries?" Cassandra asked.

The creature's head tilted slightly, then with a flash of golden light, Aaron stood before them once more. He held his right hand to his head, and his left hung limply, like it had been dislocated.

"You need to take a healing potion," Cassandra said urgently. "I have one more to—"

"No." Aaron interrupted her, his voice ragged and slurred. "No potion. Just wait."

An ember of anger kindled up in Cassandra's chest. "Are you refusing because you don't want to take your helmet off to drink? Aaron, if you wait it will make things _worse!"_

Aaron just stood there, like he hadn't even heard her.

"Aaron!" Cassandra said sharply.

"I'll be fine," Aaron said, his voice sounding much more even. He grasped his left hand with his right, and with a quick jerk, snapped it back into place.

"Holy shit!" Varric exclaimed, but Aaron was already flexing and twisting the arm in a normal range of motion. His stature straightened, and with two loud pops, he righted his neck.

"I'm all right, there's nothing to worry about," Aaron said smoothly, and there wasn't a hint of anything wrong in his voice. "Come. I must close the rift."

Without waiting for a response, Aaron began walking upstream towards the rift around the bend. Cassandra and Varric followed behind.

"Are you _sure_ you're okay?" Varric asked skeptically.

"To a reasonable degree of certainty, yes," Aaron said. If he was bothered by any pain or the events that had just occurred, it didn't show the slightest bit in his demeanor—aside from a slight brittle edge to his voice, like he was trying to _convince_ them he was all right by putting on a calm, verbose mask.

Cassandra's anger guttered out into confusion. Had Aaron healed himself? That seemed to be the only logical explanation, but she hadn't seen nor sensed him perform any magic at all. He just… got better, all by himself, in mere moments. It was utterly bizarre, and more than a little suspicious.

Then again, perhaps she owed Aaron the benefit of the doubt. Aaron had, after all, managed to resist possession by the most absurdly powerful Hunger demon she'd ever heard of. Normally, Hunger demons were firmly at the bottom of the hierarchy, but this one was as strong as any Desire demon she'd ever seen. Apparently the Breach made all manner of things possible now. Either that, or they had just been extraordinarily unlucky.

Cassandra felt a little guilty, then, for looking down on Aaron's extreme caution. In hindsight, it had been more than justified. Had that encounter gone just slightly worse, then the only one with the power to seal the rifts would have died, and the Inquisition would have ground to a halt before it could even get moving. It was a thought even more disturbing than what had transpired in that cabin.

Aaron sealed the pacified rift, with no more demons to stand in their way. He looked down at his mark afterwards, standing silent for several moments.

"If there is a difference in the strength of the mark, I cannot detect it," Aaron said in a leaden monotone.

Well, that was a minor relief. It was better than a noticeable weakening, at least.

Aaron turned back on his heel and started walking back towards the cabin.

"Do we really have to go back there?" Varric muttered.

"Yes," Cassandra and Aaron said in unison.

"We need to… to commend those people's bodies to the Maker." Cassandra said, her voice cracking. She had a sacred duty to perform, but part of her dreaded facing that scene again. "A pyre is the least we can do for them, and it will ensure no foul beings can inhabit their corpses."

"I intend to retrieve my staff," Aaron said flatly. "But you are correct, Cassandra. I will dispose of the bodies—it will be more expedient for me to burn the cabin to the ground. We have no time for a pyre."

Cassandra nor Varric both kept their silence, which Aaron took as agreement.

Aaron went into the cabin, as Varric and Cassandra waited outside in the shaded evergreen forest. A minute later, Aaron emerged, unnaturally red flames already flickering in the windows of the cabin.

As Aaron stepped out of the threshold, Cassandra could feel his magic spike in intensity. The crackle of the flames became a roar, and they licked out of the windows and began consuming the roof.

Aaron stopped a few paces away from the cabin and turned around, extending a hand towards the blazing building. The magical power redoubled _again,_ to Cassandra's shock, and the cabin was completely engulfed in an inferno that rose into the sky in a tightly controlled spiral. The scarlet flames darkened as they intensified, until they were more black than red. Cassandra could feel the magical power Aaron was exerting like a pressure on her temples, and it seemed _cold_ somehow, despite the blazing heat of the fire.

Cassandra stared into the magical flames, and willed the image before her to burn away the ones in her memories. She whispered a silent prayer for Andraste to find the lost souls of the little family that had met its end here—and for all those that had died already, and all those who were falling victim to the Breach all across Thedas while the Inquisition was still struggling to even organize a response.

The cabin charred to blackened ruins with uncanny speed. The roof collapsed in on itself, sending up a wild spray of sparks.

Cassandra reevaluated Aaron, watching as the eerie, dark red lights danced on his expressionless silver armor. She'd never seen nor felt him truly exerting his magic before, and from the looks of it, he was putting his full might into the flames. Maybe this coldness stemmed from anger, or frustration, or sorrow—but whatever it was, it revealed just how wrong Cassandra had been before to underestimate him simply because he hid his abilities and chose to specialize as a shapeshifter rather than a spellcaster. He was unskilled, and he certainly wasn't the _strongest_ mage, but this display wouldn't be possible for _any_ mage with raw power short of a senior enchanter's.

Cassandra only wondered what else Aaron was hiding. That question haunted her even after they finally resumed their travels on the Imperial Highway, and she was certain it would consume her well beyond that. In the crisis and its aftermath, Aaron had showed a new side of himself, calculating and emotionally detached.

She wasn't at all sure that was a good thing.

They'd survived the encounter with Gluttony, but Cassandra couldn't help but feel as if some part of their mission had irrevocably failed there in that cabin. Perhaps it was only the hidden hope that they would be able to save those they came across, or the notion that together they were strong enough to make a difference.

So many died at the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Those first days, losses were so staggering that their priority was not to lose _fewer_ people, but instead to simply preserve anything they possibly could. To make sure that even _a single person_ would live through it.

But this felt different. Embarking on a mission to save the world made every single failure and misstep and inadequacy _their_ responsibility, in a way that the Breach and its immediate aftermath simply wasn't.

They were still alive after that battle, but that wasn't _enough_. They needed to do more than simply survive at the expense of others, as Gluttony had. To build was infinitely more difficult than to destroy, yet that was the task they had set on themselves. The stakes could not possibly be higher, and they could brook no errors.

Cassandra had known these things before, but now she truly understood them in a way she hadn't before. She'd been wrong to prioritize satisfying her own conscience over keeping Aaron safe. She'd been considering the shame and dishonor cowardice would bring, but not the crushing consequences of failure.

By now, the sun was low over the horizon as they rode along the Imperial Highway, painting the autumn landscape in orange and red. Cassandra had been silently turning things over in her mind for hours and hours, but this conclusion seemed like something she needed to latch on to. Cassandra resolved that she would never put her own sense of honor and spiritual needs over the safety of the Inquisition and the world ever again. She made that wordless promise to herself and to the Maker above. _This_ was the sacred duty to which she would wholly devote herself, forsaking all others.

She would not let herself fail.


	13. Chapter 12

One Step Ahead Chapter 12

* * *

What a difference a little perspective makes.

Aaron swirled through the cold morning air as a dense cloud of wasps, perceiving the world around him in a shattered mosaic of millions of insect eyes, seeing from every side and angle. Aaron could feel sensations that few could ever even imagine, glimpse the true depth of the world through animal senses too alien to describe, yet there was nothing to distract him from stewing in his own thoughts as he orbited above Varric and Cassandra. No matter how his body or his perceptions may change, his memories and consciousness would remain to torment him.

Aaron felt like a terrible fool. It was a sick, disquieting feeling. Aaron had so little experience with emotions—he had only ever felt them vicariously, for the Memories of the Archive could produce lifelike visions and sensations, yet they could not impart the thoughts and feelings of those who had created it. In this way, Aaron had learned so much more of living as an individual than he had ever imagined before in his simple existence as a tiny facet of the darkspawn group mind, but the Memories were still limited in what they could express.

It was clear that there was much more for him to learn.

Shame, it turned out, was a sensation that seemed quite similar to disgust, only directed at oneself. For all that he knew the definition of the emotion, for all that he understood it well enough to infer what it was from context, it was still a totally foreign thing to Aaron, because no concept of self-regard existed at all to the darkspawn. There was only the bliss that was the Song of the Old Gods, and the primal satisfaction of carrying out its purpose.

Aaron was just starting to grasp how little he had actually exercised the individuality his Awakening had given him.

He had never wanted to be his own person, an individual. He had never conceived of free will, much less desired it. He made the first choice of his life without even realizing he had done so, when he decided he wanted to return to the Song. He had slavishly followed the Mother's plans to do so, striking at the Father and his forces more in blind, vindictive rage than for any constructive purpose.

Then the Warden-Commander had arrived, and everything changed.

Following his desertion from the Mother's army, nothing he had decided had carried any real consequence, and thus nothing could really reflect positively or negatively upon him. Aaron was untested as a person, he realized. And when his test had finally come, he had failed.

The sheer _ease_ with which Gluttony had utterly crushed his mind and body was disturbing, but what truly shamed Aaron was what had ultimately freed him from Gluttony's mental influence.

It hadn't been strength of body, nor strength of magic, nor strength of will. It had not been the moral and ethical convictions he claimed to hold dear. It had not been any striking insight of intelligence or logic. It hadn't even been something as basic as his fear of death or the instinct to survive.

No, he'd been saved by his own _weakness_ —his desire for the Song of the Old Gods.

The Mother and her army had tried to regain the Song in every way imaginable. Trying to bargain it by summoning demons had been one of the first things they'd tried, but even the rare demons that were willing to parlay with intelligent darkspawn were unable to undo the Father's Awakening, nor even produce a convincing simulacrum of the Song. The Song was no mere sound, it had an ineffable quality to it, a sheer, arresting _perfection_ that was impossible to emulate. The haunting, ethereal beauty of the Song could not be recaptured even in one's own memories, save for the certainty that memory simply didn't do it justice. There was always something _missing_.

That was how Aaron had resisted Gluttony's possession, even in his completely addled and suggestible state. He'd known, through countless trial and error yielding only despair, that there was no carnal vice Gluttony could offer him that would be more fulfilling than the Song. Gluttony was an entity of hunger and greed, and tempted people along those lines, but what Aaron thirsted for no demon could provide.

It was enough to make Aaron _angry_ at himself. He couldn't properly belong with any people or group, not even the Father's other Awakened darkspawn, but he at least thought he had the strength of his convictions to fall back on. He had supposedly learned the arts of skepticism, rationality, and logic from studying the dwarves' histories, yet he had still somehow deluded himself into thinking that his affinity for the Song was over and done. Submission to the Song went against every value he'd come to possess—every ideal of ethics, every notion of freedom and individuality, even the very concept of thought and emotion.

But upon further reflection, his belief that he had moved past needing the Song was false.

Aaron had simply given up all hope of ever regaining the Song, and had latched on to Dunammar's philosophy of rationalism as a pale, inferior substitute—something to give his life some semblance of purpose and enjoyment, something to escape the aching loss. He'd even convinced himself that he _preferred_ it.

What an ugly lie that had been.

Aaron was not about to give up, however. He _had_ changed, even though it was not as complete a transformation as he'd once believed. Just because individuality and rationality held _less_ value to him than the Song didn't mean that they were inconsequential. No, these things he had learned _were_ precious and deeply important to him—it was just that not even the greatest experiences in life as an individual could compare to the hedonistic perfection that was the Song. That wasn't merely Aaron's inexperience speaking—every single Grey Warden that had ever lived long enough ultimately abandoned their previous lives in pursuit of the Song. It would be arrogant to assume that _any_ amount of wisdom or logic or philosophy would make Aaron any different than them.

Was it really fair for Aaron to judge himself this way? Could he really be held responsible for reacting in the way he had been conditioned to all his life?

Aaron mused about this, wondering how he could be an advocate of Dunammar's philosophy if he was not yet fully committed to it himself. But even _that_ seemed like a largely selfish concern, in comparison to the terrifyingly consequential situation he found himself embroiled in. Aaron decided he would try to resolve his personal development crisis once there _wasn't_ an apocalypse to avert.

The Breach _mattered_. Gluttony's victims _mattered_. They had lives and perspectives just like Aaron did. People were suffering on a vast, unknowable scale, and every single one of them _mattered,_ regardless of whether Aaron knew of them. Reprehensible or not, weak-willed or not, Aaron was still directly responsible for finding some way to end the Breach. If he could only do this one thing, then his own failings would be inconsequential. In the grand scheme of things, the only way that his weakness would matter would be if he allowed it to stop him from destroying the Breach.

The problem was, Aaron had no idea how to set about doing even this one thing.

Aaron shied away from this line of thought, and returned his attention to his task at hand, scouting the lands ahead. Quite frankly, it wasn't any more comforting than his introspection had been.

Aaron mustered his power, and with an effort like pulling and pushing, he split his swarm into three sub-swarms, each occupying his focus and housing his awareness. He sent two of the swarms out over the land below, like a combination of "hands" and "eyes," keeping the third as a sort of "body" following over Varric and Cassandra. That really wasn't it at all, but the truth of what he was doing defied conventional description.

Through his swarms, Aaron could sense the character of the landscape and forests changing significantly as the Imperial Highway gradually wound its way out of the mountains and into the valleys of the Southeast. Aaron had briefly skimmed the _Botanical Field Guide of Southern Thedas_ during his research back at Haven, and so he was reasonably sure that the spiny trees were the ones called 'evergreen' and the ones with broad leaves in unusual colors were the ones called 'deciduous.' As they went further down in altitude, the evergreens steadily gave way to the deciduous trees.

The land became more sparse, as the deciduous forests thinned and gave way to more human farms and settlements. The humans here tended towards squat, round buildings of stone and wood, and many of the buildings were obviously destroyed. On closer inspection, evidence of war was everywhere. Aaron could smell the sickly-sweet odor of crops rotting or withering in untended fields. Many farms appeared to be long-abandoned, and others were charred wrecks, billowing sharp-tasting black smoke into the air that irritated Aaron's many sets of antennae. Destroyed wagons littered the roads, and corpses in various states of decomposition were piled in ditches alongside them or simply left out in the open. Unnatural pillars of frozen coldness and bewitched, smokeless flames could still be found, long after the mages that spawned them had left or been killed.

It was clear that the problems here long predated the Breach.

The Mage-Templar War had reignited in earnest. Aaron had only a vague understanding of the conflict, but it followed historically prominent patterns. The mages were a long-oppressed minority, pushed into rebellion and extremism by the steadily escalating oppression and institutional decay on behalf of the Templar Order, their overseers and ostensible guardians. It was not dissimilar to the Casteless Revolts of Dunammar's early history, where a population was likewise kept segregated and oppressed from birth, until tensions rose and conflict became inevitable.

The grim lesson from history was that neither side in these types of conflicts were blameless, and that made lasting peace incredibly difficult. Always, the individual was held accountable for the crimes of the group, and the group was held accountable for the crimes of the individual. In such an environment, there could be no innocence, and thus there could be no justice, nor peace.

What had ultimately ended the Castless Revolts was the larger external threat posed by an invasion of Dunnamar by the league of allied thaigs that would later become the Dwarven Empire, which itself fell to the unified invasion of the darkspawn. Aaron only hoped that the Mage-Templar War would also end in the face of the Breach's threat of mutual annihilation.

Sadly, there was relatively little precedent in history to suggest that would be the case here. The dwarves had defined many terms for problems of collective action—the Tragedy of the Commons, the Bystander Effect, and the Prisoner's Dilemma seemed particularly applicable here. That Dunammar was able to largely able to manage these forces was of little comfort, considering its population was highly educated, affluent, culturally homogeneous, and had an extremely stable system of government. The Surface had… none of these things in any meaningful sense.

Aaron felt so very, very small. The world was so vast, how was _he_ supposed to tackle any one of the Surface's problems, much less _all_ of them? He couldn't address the Breach because the mages and templars were at war with each other, and he couldn't resolve _that_ without solving intractable problems like bigotry, poverty, and illiteracy.

It made Aaron feel as small and insignificant as the insects which comprised his current form…

Aaron paused at that, physically coming to a halt in midair. His body swirled around itself, the individual wasps weaving in and around each other in complex eddies like water—a pattern that wasn't directed by Aaron's conscious control, but which arose by the individual interactions of each individual wasp executing similar basic functions, never letting the other wasps fly too close nor stray too far away.

Aaron could feel his perspective shifting, as he meditated on the movement of his form. He had a strange, tingling feeling of anticipation, like he was working towards a profound realization.

People were like the wasps. They each followed similar patterns, interacted with their neighbors. The _swarm_ was an entity unto itself, composed of individual wasps all acting in tandem, yet it was _more_ than just the individual wasps. Complexity arising from simplicity.

In order to change their form into something else, a shapeshifter needed to study the subject and attempt to embody how it moved, acted, and reacted. Aaron had studied and ultimately became the _swarm,_ not just the individual wasp. Aaron doubted he could take the form of a single wasp, even if he tried. Despite that, Aaron had been able to master the form of the swarm vastly more easily than any other creature he had studied. He understood, on a level deeper than nearly any other individual alive, what it meant to embody a complex system that was more than the sum of its parts. That's what the darkspawn horde had been, before he'd been cast adrift.

Now, he was trying to go up against titanic social forces—nations, institutions, factions. It was absurd to think he'd be able to do so alone. Alone, he was like an individual wasp facing a swarm. Regardless of his individual merit or ability, he would never be able to succeed by himself. But the actions of a single wasp in a swarm could have an impact. The individual wasps exerted an influence on the ones closest to them, which influenced the next, and so on, the consequences rippling outward until the entire swarm's behavior changed due to the actions of a single wasp.

Aaron had been so preoccupied by the foreignness of individuality that he never understood the fundamental similarity between the darkspawn horde and the social structures of the other races. The entities created by groups of people were vastly more diverse and lacked the unifying perspective of a group mind, but they operated no differently on the macro scale. Aaron, despite the pride he'd held in his uniquely broad perspective, had been missing the forest for the trees.

These were not problems he needed to solve alone.

Aaron's attention shifted to the companions that rode directly below him—Cassandra and Varric. As the people who had the most contact with Aaron, he had regarded them as allies at best, liabilities at worst, a risk to his identity being uncovered—but if he were to think more in terms of a swarm, they were his immediate neighbors, the individuals he could exert the most influence over. And acting together, they might be able to exert a greater influence over the Inquisition, and the Inquisition might be able to influence the things that Aaron himself could not.

It wasn't a plan, not yet. But it was enough to spur Aaron into action, into taking the first step.

Aaron descended until he hung in the air before Cassandra and Varric, buzzing loudly. The horses came to a stop, and Aaron returned to his true form, becoming one body in a flash of golden light.

"What is it? More demons?" Cassandra demanded as she hauled on the horse's reins, her face twisted with an unidentifiable emotion.

"No," Aaron said quietly, then raised his voice. "We are getting close to the Inquisition's forward camp. I wanted to join you down here, and… I wanted to talk with both of you."

"About what?" Varric asked with a half-apprehensive smile.

Aaron shrugged. "Anything. It just seemed like a good idea to get to know you both better… to get out of my own head for a bit."

Cassandra and Varric exchanged a baffled look.

"I think I could use that too, to be honest," Cassandra admitted with a sigh. "What happened back there rattled me, more than I care to admit."

Varric shook his head. "I'd be more worried if that kind of shit _didn't_ rattle you, Seeker. It sure did me."

"Me too. It made me realize some things, actually—this crisis is so much bigger than any one of us, and I think I was conceptualizing my role in things the wrong way." Aaron said, and he was surprised at how easy it was to voice his thoughts aloud once he'd overcome the difficult decision to share them.

* * *

Aaron talked with Varric and Cassandra for a what seemed like a long time. Varric shared his insights on Aaron's thoughts, venting his frustrations at dealing with the intractable, foolish traditionalists in Orzammar. Cassandra, for her part, offered encouraging words about the amazing things she'd been able to achieve by working as one of the Seekers of Truth. She'd never have been able to accomplish those things alone, or so she claimed.

Varric and Cassandra both seemed genuinely sympathetic with how daunted Aaron felt at the prospect of facing this crisis by himself. Aaron told them about his epiphany with the wasps and swarms, which had then segued into talking about his shapeshifting in general. They were still discussing the topic by the time the Inquisition camp came within sight, situated on top of a relatively defensible rock outcropping.

"Wait, so if you can shapeshift into a swarm of bugs, why didn't you do that to escape when Gluttony grabbed you and tried to eat you? Did you deliberately let Gluttony eat you so that you could shapeshift and kill it from the inside?" Varric asked, clumsily leading his horse up the slope.

Aaron shook his head. "Actually, no. I didn't take my swarm form because I was attacking Gluttony with my spear and lightning, but its resilience and attack caught me off-guard. I was already in Gluttony's mouth by the time I remembered a series of experiments I did on my shapeshifting abilities, in particular the property that the volume of the new form physically displaces the old, even against pressure. I was originally inspired to investigate that possibility after reading a novel in which a magic ring suddenly transforms back into a pearl and takes off someone's finger in the process."

Varric burst out into laughter. After getting control of himself again, he said, "You should remember never to try _anything_ you read in my books, Fluffy. Or if you do, at least make sure I'm there to watch it."

Cassandra, for some reason, started blushing at this.

Aaron was about to reply to Varric, but stopped when he spotted someone approaching them. She was a freckled, russet-haired dwarf wearing the Inquisition uniform, with an unstrung longbow strapped to her back.

Aaron felt a jolt of excitement at meeting another dwarf in person. So far, Varric had been the only representative of the dwarven people that Aaron had ever actually talked to.

Aaron crossed his fists over his chest and bowed to her in the formal fashion of the dwarves. _"Atrast vala."_ Aaron intoned.

The woman looked taken aback, then she hastily returned the bow. "Um, it's an honor to meet you, Knight of Andraste. I'm a scout, my name is Harding. I'm just a trader's daughter, though, so there's no need for the, uh... show of deference, Ser."

"My name is Aaron, please address me as such. I was once a scout myself, before I started studying to become a scholar." Aaron said with a touch of amusement. "It seems I am falling back into that role again, in this crisis. So don't assume that you are any less deserving of respect than me."

Harding smiled. "Thanks, Kni— _Aaron_. I never would have expected you were a scout, no offense. I guess it's just that the rumors make you sound like this mysterious, mythic being, not a person just like the rest of us."

"Oh, he's pretty mysterious all right, and sure to be mythic at some point in the future, but yeah, he's still just a person—a very weird person, but a person nonetheless." Varric attested.

"Not that I'm disappointed in you or anything!" Harding added hastily, then her expression turned more serious. "But we could really use a mythic figure right about now. Things are _dire_ here in the Hinterlands."

"We know," Cassandra said grimly. "We've already encountered powerful demons running amok."

Harding shook her head. "The demons aren't even the biggest problem, at least not yet. Most of them just linger around the Fade rifts. The real problem are the mages and the templars—there's encampments of each of them close by, and skirmishes are breaking out all over. It's all the refugees can do to avoid the demons, much less run away from roving bands of murdering _zealots."_

"Are you referring to the mages or the templars?" Aaron asked.

"Both," Harding said, gritting her teeth. "The ones camped out there? They're the real lunatics, the ones too crazy or bloodthirsty to hole up like the rest of the mages and templars while everything's falling apart. I've seen a group of templars go _out of their way_ to attack innocent refugees—although that time, they didn't live long enough to kill anyone."

Harding patted her longbow with a fierce glint to her eye.

Aaron gave her a nod of acknowledgement. "We'll be watchful. Speaking of which, have you discerned the location of the Revered Mother?"

"Mother Giselle? Yeah, we found her pretty easily. She's set up near the crossroads, just a little ways down the road there." Harding said, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "She's helping the refugees, tending to the sick and wounded with the help of a few hunters, soldiers, and a mage or two. We tried talking to her, but she refuses to evacuate to a safer place while the refugees are here."

Aaron tilted his head, thinking. At first, it seemed like a foolish thing to him—if for no other reason than Mother Giselle putting herself in jeopardy was inconvenient to Aaron's mission to make contact with her. She couldn't help anyone if she was dead, after all. But Aaron doubted that the woman was too stupid to understand she was in danger. Perhaps it was a testament to Mother Giselle's character that she was unwilling to abandon the refugees, or perhaps her role here was more important than it seemed at first glance.

"I suppose that means we'll simply have to ensure Mother Giselle's safety—perhaps that was her intention all along." Aaron mused.

Harding's eyebrows furrowed. "I admit, the thought _has_ occurred to me that it's awfully convenient that the Inquisition ended up sending much of the few forces it has to stand vigil over the crossroads. Giselle may be a Revered Mother, but she's still an Orlesian."

Varric snorted. "At least she's using her dread powers of manipulation for Andraste, then."

"I don't think this is merely some selfish Orlesian scheme," Cassandra said thoughtfully. "Mother Giselle is famous—or rather _notorious_ —for putting her own life in danger to help the unfortunate. Her hunger strike in Jader after the Blight ended up saving thousands of poor humans and elves, but it hardly endeared her to the nobles and Chantry officials who felt she was extorting them for charity."

"I see," Aaron said, crossing his arms. "While I can't fault her courage or methods, the fact remains that she's putting us in a difficult position. The Inquisition is needed to do more than just guard people here in the Hinterlands. It would be to everyone's advantage if the situation here is resolved, and quickly."

Harding stood straighter and saluted, making a fist with her right hand over her chest. "I'll stay here and keep an eye out on things. It's not even half a mile to the crossroads. You can leave your horses here at the camp, if you like."

"Thank the Maker," Cassandra muttered, swatting at a horsefly.

* * *

Varric, Cassandra, and Aaron left behind the horses and made their way back down the escarpment, into the crossroads proper. It was essentially a few small huts and buildings arranged around the intersection of two unpaved roads. It was beautiful, in a way, with the waterfall cascading from the northern slope, but it was hardly the hub of activity and elegant infrastructure that a crossroads in the Deep Roads would be. Aaron was rapidly becoming desensitized to the poverty and general decrepitude of human civilization, such as it was. The only sign that things had once been better here was an ancient, pale statue of Andraste rising high above all the other buildings.

The Inquisition had established a modest presence here, a few tents on the outskirts of the crossroads. The overwhelming majority of it, however, was crowded with clusters of people and lone individuals who closely guarded what meager belongings they had on their person or in bundles nearby. Everyone seemed to be on edge, and that was without even taking into account the weapons people clung to, whether they be proper swords or farming tools.

This was what a society looked like at its breaking point, Aaron realized.

Mother Giselle was relatively easy to spot in her robes of red and white trimmed in gold—she was at the southern end of the crossroads, near where they were approaching from, standing amongst an impromptu outdoor hospital. Cots and stretchers were lined with people, primarily injured, bandaged human men.

Giselle, in turn, spotted them relatively quickly, and moved from the bedside of one of the injured men, whispering something to the gray-robed man behind her, who knelt down beside the injured man and began tending him with glowing blue magic wreathing his hands.

Aaron mentally breathed a small sigh of relief. It appeared that Mother Giselle was not overtly hostile to mages, unlike Chancellor Roderick had been.

Giselle strode over to them, and Aaron noticed that she was quite a bit older than he'd been expecting, her dark brown creased with lines. He was able to see them even despite the black cloth covering the insides of his eye-slits, which tended to render most fine details rather fuzzy.

"Mother Giselle, I presume?" Aaron asked, inclining his head.

"I am. And you must be the one they are calling the Knight of Andraste, yes?" Giselle said, a distinct Orlesian lilt to her words.

"Just Aaron will do, thanks." Aaron said, starting to wonder how many times he'd have to tell people to call him by his new name and not the unwanted title. "You asked to meet with me?"

"I did," Giselle said, starting to walk away from the cots. Aaron was forced to follow to continue the conversation. "I know that you and the Inquisition have been denounced as heretical. I'm also familiar with those who are speaking out against you."

"What they say is simply not true. I do not claim to have any sort of divine mandate. The fact of the matter is, I can barely remember what happened to me at all." Aaron said flatly.

"I believe you," Giselle said, her tone soft. "Some are merely grandstanding, hoping it will increase their chances of being appointed the new Divine. Others are simply terrified of you, and what you represent."

Aaron put his hands on his hips, causing his mantle to draw back from his sides. It was almost impossible to convincingly deny that he was trying to become the leader of some kind of cult, because quite frankly his immediate goals did involve amassing a lot of institutional power and influence, albeit in a secular sense. Still, he couldn't let that pass without comment. "I think they ought to be more terrified of the Breach which may yet destroy the world, rather than a single person."

Mother Giselle raised an eyebrow at him. "Do not forget that many still believe that _you_ are responsible for creating the Breach. The remaining clerics have heard only frightful tales of you. To them, their fears are entirely justified. You need to _show_ them that you are not some monster to be feared."

The sheer, overwhelming irony of that statement muted any response that Aaron might have given her.

"I see you're still skeptical," Giselle said diffidently. "But there is much you may yet do to prove your character. Do not forget that mages were celebrated among the heroes of the Fifth Blight. Your kind may be persecuted, but individuals may still rise above the prejudices of others, if they are able to provide hope. Give the people hope, and they will rally to your cause."

Aaron was a bit taken aback at this. If Cassandra's story had been any indication, Mother Giselle certainly had experience in gaining followers, and her advice actually seemed pretty prudent, albeit basic. Of course, she only thought he was a mage—he was absolutely certain that no one would accept his true nature, with the exception of the Warden-Commander. Even getting _Sister_ _Leliana_ to not murder him had been a stretch, and from what Aaron had been able to infer about the horrifically backwards and primitive Surface politics, she was easily one of the most radically tolerant public figures in Thedas.

Aaron felt a bit awkward as the silence between them stretched on, so he defaulted to honesty. "If people look to me, I will certainly do whatever I can to lead by example, but you called this _my_ cause. That worries me. I'm only trying to do the right thing, I don't _own_ that."

Giselle smiled, her expression gentle and kind. "I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, but the very fact that you _are_ worried about such things is very reassuring to me. You are absolutely right, this is about more than just you. But the fact remains that you _are_ the one people will look to, a symbol of the Inquisition. Whether you agree to it or not, you must at least understand that—or, better yet, learn to _use_ your position to bring attention and help to those who need it."

Aaron took a step back from Mother Giselle, reassessing her. He'd been expecting to deal with another unpleasant, unreasonable religious official, but Giselle was turning that stereotype on its ear. Despite himself, Aaron was impressed by her quiet, assured sort of charisma. Her words were innocuous enough taken by themselves, but the sheer conviction with which she said them was oddly compelling. She seemed the complete opposite of Chancellor Roderick, and he couldn't deny the sense of what she was saying. Aaron suddenly understood why Leliana had thought Giselle was important and influential enough to grant her request to meet Aaron personally out in the Hinterlands. He could learn a _lot_ from this priestess, if she was willing.

That is, if Aaron could secure her cooperation.

"You must know this area and its problems fairly well, what do you think my companions and I can do that would best help these people?" Aaron asked.

"No mage is as welcome a sight as a healer, but I'm afraid the few mages I have here lack the power or skill to treat the worst injuries. Do you have any expertise in healing magic?" Giselle asked.

Aaron felt a cold twisting sensation in his stomach. His magic was, in fact, exactly antithetical to healing. The Blight's inherent power allowed even non-magical darkspawn to regenerate from grievous injuries in hours or mere minutes, depending on how powerful they were, but Aaron didn't have the slightest idea how to heal someone else. He had studied Blight magic with the Father before he rebelled, and the Mother after that, and had even run his own experiments on the subject in the course of assembling and enchanting his Blight-sealing armor. He knew how to accelerate the Blight's corruption, how to create Grey Wardens and Awaken darkspawn, but nothing he ever researched suggested that he would be able to heal.

"I'm afraid not," Aaron said, feeling rather useless. "It's not because I lack the interest, but I'm a hedge mage, I never received any training or education in—"

Aaron was cut off by the sounds of shouting coming from behind him. He whirled around, scanning the landscape.

A pair of men with the Inquisition were sprinting towards an improvised barricade of wood and sandbags on the western road, their swords drawn. Refugees screamed and started running in the opposite direction, covering their heads and grabbing bags and other people nearby. Beyond the barricade, Aaron saw perhaps ten warriors in plate armor rapidly approaching. They wore silver and red, and some of their helmets had high plumes on the sides.

Templars.

Even as Aaron realized what they were, he saw one of the two Inquisition soldiers jerk to the side, the shaft of an arrow sticking out from his chest. He crumpled to the ground, and Aaron's blood went icy as his mind's awareness sharpened into battle-readiness.

"Varric! Cassandra!" Aaron barked out, gesturing at them. "Hold the barricade! I'll go after the archer!"

Varric and Cassandra were both already drawing their weapons, and rushing past the stunned Mother Giselle.

"Maker, templars are attacking _here?"_ Giselle muttered to herself.

Aaron was already running, scout Harding's warning about the templars' atrocities echoing in his mind. He could _not_ let the templars pass. All this talk of restoring hope and changing things for the better would never come to fruition if he allowed the forces of barbarity to triumph over civility. Here, now, he would make a difference the only way he could.

Aaron was going to protect these refugees and the Revered Mother. And for him to do that, these templars had to die.

In his rage, fueled by the emotions and horror of the past few days, it never even occurred to Aaron that he should be disturbed that at the prospect of murdering these men and women, he didn't feel even the slightest hint of sympathy.

Aaron unslung his staff, gripping it like a spear and charging it with lightning. He tapped into the well of his magic, and went yet further, calling the deeper reservoir of power that resided in his Blighted blood. His entire body crackled with energy.

Aaron would _not_ be defeated this time.


End file.
